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ROYAL WOMEN 




Queen Elizabeth in youth 



ROYAL WOMEN 

Their History and Romance 



BY 

MARY RIDPATH-MANN 

Author of 
The Unofficial Secretary 



ILLUSTRATED 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1913 






Copyright 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1913 



Published March, 1913 



©Ci.A343540 



To the Memory of 
■ My Father 

? JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 

:^ Whose Love of History 

Is My Inheritance 



FOREWORD 

"XTISTORY is the essence of innumerable 
I I biographies." So says Carlyle. It was 
the author's purpose when these lectures 
were written to place before the audience in a new 
light some of the women who have helped to make 
up the world's history. No effort was made to 
prepare such as would be suitable for school-room 
or study class, in which every date must be abso- 
lutely correct, every fact beyond question. These 
things lie within the province of the text-book. 
The author takes for granted that the great his- 
toric events are known to all, and has therefore 
endeavored to use history solely to illustrate char- 
acter. It is the charm of history that no matter 
how well we may know the facts — the bricks and 
mortar, as it were, that have builded the historical 
fabric — we turn with eagerness to any new in- 
formation which a little research may bring to 
light, even though it add slightly to our former 
knowledge. 

It is the private life of royal personages which 
interests us. Their public lives, restricted by cere- 
mony and disguised by formalities, give little 



Foreword 

insight into their real characters. Not until we 
strip them of the lustre which blinds us, the 
glamour and the pomp in which they are envel- 
oped, can we see them as they are. One fact we 
acknowledge as unquestionable. No matter to 
what heights men and women may climb, they are 
still human. The triumphs of glory and ambition 
do not satisfy the longings of the heart. A man 
though he be a king, a woman though she be an 
empress, feels as much the need of human sym- 
pathy, of personal happiness, as does the humblest 
citizen or the little peasant girl who walks bare- 
footed in the fields. Ofttimes these royal people 
frankly admit that they would exchange the robes 
of state and the jeweled crown for the sound of a 
voice or a smile from some far-distant face. 

The Dryasdust may contend if he will that 
history and romance are as far removed from each 
other as the East is from the West, yet even he 
must admit that all romance when it concerns 
royalty becomes history. None can deny the part 
that the Casket Letters, whether genuine or forged, 
played in the life of Mary Queen of Scots; and 
the love letters of Mirabeau and Gambetta are as 
much a part of the history of France as is the 
Code Napoleon. 

History and romance, then, go hand in hand. 
Where the one leads the other follows. History 



Foreword 

is like a gigantic fortress whose grim and massive 
walls triumphantly defy decay. Romance is a 
tender, clinging vine. Year after year it clambers 
over those damp and musty walls. It creeps into 
every tiny nook and crevice. It hides their bare 
ugliness from the sight of man, and keeps them 
green forever and a day. 

M. R. M. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Last of the Tudoks .... 1 
Elizabeth of England 

II Crown and Thistle 53 

Mary Queen of Scots 

III A Victim of the Revolution . . . 105 
Marie Antoinette 

IV The Empress of the French . . 171 
Josephine 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Queen Elizabeth in youth Frontispiece ^ 

Henry Eighth 2 v^ 

^Anne Boleyn 6 V'" 

The Tower of London 20 v/ 

Traitors' Gate 201/ 

Sir Walter Ealeigh 34 / 

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex 34 ^ 

Queen Elizabeth wearing the peacock dress ... 36'-'' 

London Bridge 38 !- 

Queen Elizabeth's walk at Windsor 38 ^^ 

Elizabeth hesitating to sign the order for Mary's 

execution 42^ 

Death of Queen Elizabeth 50 ^ 

Mary Stuart in youth 53 . 

James Fifth and Mary of Lorraine 58 ' 

Stirling Castle 62^ 

Francis of Valois 70^ 

Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley 70 "^ 

Holyrood Castle 74 »^ 

Apartment of Mary at Holyrood 74 

The casket letters 88*^ 

Abdication of the Queen 94'^' 

The execution 94'''^ 

Marie Antoinette in youth 105 "^ 

Louis Sixteenth, King of France IIO/ 

The last roll call during the Reign of Terror . . . 124'/ 

Marie Antoinette and her children . . . . . . 142 '/ 

Louis Sixteenth taking leave of his family . , . 160 

Louis Sixteenth before the bar of the Convention . 162 



PAGE 

Louis Sixteenth ou the scaffold 162 ' ^ 

Marie Antoinette taking leave of the Dauphin . . 164 '^' 

The night before the execution 166 ^^ 

Marie Antoinette in the cart 166 ^ 

Josephine 171 

Josephine in youth 180 

Josephine as Empress 186 

Coronation of Josephine 194 

Napoleon announcing to Josephine his decision to 

divorce her 196 

The retreat from Moscow 204^^ 

Tomb of Josephine at Reuil 212 ^# 

Tomb of Napoleon at St. Helena 212 v\ 

The Emperor 214 ^^ 




THE LAST OF THE TUDORS 

Elizabeth o£ England 



ROYAL WOMEN 

I 

THE LAST OF THE TUDORS 
Elizabeth 

SOMEWHERE in the history of almost every 
people we find the story of a Golden Age. It 
was the Age of Pericles in Greece. It was 
the Augustan Age in Rome. It was Florence 
under the Medicii. It was while Louis Fourteenth 
was king in France. It was the Ehzabethan Age 
in England. 

The story of Ehzabeth, the last of the Tudors, 
is the whole history of England for nearly half a 
century. Hers is perhaps the most distinguished 
name in the annals of royal women, and the years 
of her reign — 1558 to 1603 — cover the most 
fascinating period in English history. There is 
scarcely a thing about her which is not interesting. 
Even the circumstances which surrounded her birth 
were romantic. 

There was once a school-boy who when told to 
write a composition on Henry Eighth started out 

I 



2 Royal Women 

boldly by saying, "Henry Eighth was the most 
married man in history!" When we recall the 
harems of the sultans and the wives of Solomon, 
we are compelled to admit that there is some 
inaccuracy in the young man's diagnosis; but the 
numerous ventures matrimonial of Henry Eighth 
certainly added much to the history of his time. 
His reign and that of his six wives had an effect 
upon those of both his daughters. With all his 
conduct, he had many of the qualities of a great 
ruler. He did much for England, yet a glance 
at the celebrated portrait of him by Hans Holbein 
makes us pause and wonder. It is that of a stout, 
broad-shouldered man, in sumptuous apparel, be- 
decked with jewels. The head, with its large, bony 
frame, is covered with soft flesh. There is a hard 
look in the small eyes under the straight eyebrows, 
a sensual mouth — the whole face a picture of 
callousness beneath which the pleasing traits which 
Nature doubtless gave him originally have totally 
disappeared. Yet the chroniclers of the times unite 
in saying that Henry's personality was pleasing, 
that all who came in contact with him felt his 
charm of manner. Perhaps the fascination which 
he seemed to exercise over women may be attributed 
to the fact that wherever kingly favor is shown it 
is always the voice of ambition which replies. Roj^al 
attentions are hard to resist. 




Henry Eiglith 



Elizabeth 3 

Henry's first wife was Catherine of Aragon, the 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. She 
had been married previously to his older brother, 
the Prince of Wales, but the latter died young, and 
the king, his father, was very anxious for political 
reasons to keep Catherine in England as the wife 
of Henry. The Church was loth to consent to this 
marriage; and not only that, it was against the 
English law. Not until 1907 was the law which 
then applied, which forbade a man to marry his 
deceased wife's sister or his brother's widow, modi- 
fied in England.* But kings are often a law 
unto themselves, and so the marriage took place. 
Catherine was five years older than Henry, and 
although she was the mother of many children, only 
one lived. This was Mary Tudor, the first woman 
in England who was a queen in her own right 
because she was the daughter of a king. 

Elizabeth was truly a child of romance. When 
the Princess Mary was a little girl there came to 
court in attendance upon her a pretty little maid-in- 
waiting named Anne Boleyn. She was winsome, 
attractive, and well-born. No sooner had Henry 

*A few years ago a clergyman of the English Church refused 
the Holy Communion to a man who had married his brother's 
widow. He followed the refusal with a request that his parish- 
ioner bring suit against him in order to see if something could 
not be done toward repealing the law. The result was that the 
law was modified in 1907 to the extent that the civil marriage 
Is now binding. The church may still refuse the Holy Com- 
munion if the clergyman sees fit. 



4 Royal Women 

set eyes upon her than he perceived what a heinous 
crime he had been committing all these years in 
living with his dead brother's wife! Well, it was 
never too late to mend. He would no longer be 
guilty of breaking the law. 

He called in his friend, Cardinal Wolsey, and 
laid his troubles before him. Wolsey knew very 
well the opposition which the Head of the Church 
would put forth, so he played a double role. He 
attempted to keep in the good graces of both the 
king and the Holy Father. This Henry, of course, 
discovered. He wasted no time on the Cardinal. 
He stripped him of all his honors and possessions. 
Finally Wolsey was arrested and was to be brought 
to London for trial. When they came for him, 
however, he was dying. Unable to survive the ruin 
of his fortune and fame, he was broken in body and 
mind. He arose from his bed and attempted to 
accompany them, but was so ill that it was neces- 
sary to stop on the way at the Abbey of Leicester, 
where Wolsey died. Here at this old abbey he 
spoke the words afterward made immortal by Shake- 
speare. He said to his old friend and servant, 
Thomas Cromwell: 

And thus far hear me, Cromwell, 
And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, 
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention 
Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee. 



Elizabeth 5 

Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory 
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor, 
Found thee a way out of his wreck to rise in. 
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. 
By that sin fell the angels. O Cromwell, Croiuwell, 
Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, He would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

Queen Catherine did not intend to be lightly put 
aside. When she found that it was Henry's inten- 
tion to divorce her she demanded a trial, and came 
before the king and the Councillors to plead her 
own cause. The trial lasted for two weeks. Then 
the judges rendered the verdict which declared that 
her marriage was not and never had been legal. 
The fact that this decision rendered the Princess 
Mary illegitimate weighed not a feather with her 
royal father. Henry had taken time by the fore- 
lock and had married Anne Boleyn before the 
divorce was declared, and on the day following 
he publicly ratified the marriage by having her 
crowned queen of England. 

It was not to be supposed for a moment that 
the Head of the Church would sit quietly and see 
his mandates set at naught in this high and mighty 
fashion. One of two things was certain. Either 
Catherine's marriage was legal and the Princess 
Mary's birth legitimate, or else Anne Boleyn's was, 
which reversed the situation. Thus there became 



6 Royal Women 

two sides to the question. Henry was on one side 
and Pope Clement on the other, and while they 
quarreled Anne presented her lord and master with 
a baby daughter, to whom the king, in honor of 
his mother, gave the name Elizabeth. Shortly 
after her birth came the decree of the Head of 
the Church which declared Catherine's marriage 
legal and that of Anne invalid. Henry promptly 
retaliated by declaring himself Head of the Church 
in England, and Pope Clement, who was having 
troubles of his own with Martin Luther, seemed 
powerless just then to prevent Henry from having 
his own way. 

Not a great while after this, however, the king 
found that his carefully planted garden was yield- 
ing him nothing but thorns. The Green-eyed 
Monster began to make things lively for him. His 
young queen lost his affection and confidence in 
the very same way in which she had gained them. 
When he saw her making herself agreeable to every- 
body about the court, Henry promptly lost all 
interest in her. He treated her first with coldness, 
then with aversion. The question of Anne Boleyn's 
guilt has been much discussed. History knows all 
that it is likely to know on that point, and there 
is nothing to prove that she was really guilty. She 
was young, light-hearted, full of spirit, a little 




Anne Boleyn^ motlier of Queen Elizabeth 



Elizabeth 7 

vain, perhaps, and coquettish ; but there is nothing 
to substantiate the accusation that she was really 
unfaithful or immoral. Finally the king had her 
arrested, charged with disloyalty, not treason, and 
she was closely confined in the Tower. She had tried 
in every way to conciliate him. She would find out 
in some way where she could come upon him alone, 
and, carrying the little Elizabeth in her arms, would 
try by all the wiles she was mistress of to win a 
smile from him, but in vain. 

Anne protested her innocence. When they came 
to conduct her to the Tower, Henry was saying his 
prayers in his little private chapel — not a bad 
occupation, truly, but somewhat absurd under the 
circumstances. Anne knew he was there, and 
when the guard approached she ran screaming 
through the corridors to the chapel and flung 
herself at the king's feet, begging for mercy. He 
repulsed her coldly and she was led away. She 
was condemned and' executed, and as though that 
were not enough, the three-year-old Elizabeth was 
declared illegitimate. 

Henry did not waste any time grieving over his 
troubles. The day after Anne Boleyn was executed 
he married the Lady Jane Seymour. Perhaps if 
she had lived, the future conduct of her willful and 
erratic lord might have been more conformable to 



8 Royal Women 

the authorized standard of morals and propriety; 
but the queen died within the year, leaving a little 
son, the future Edward Sixth. 

The king had had sufficient experience by this 
time not to indulge in any unseemly grief over so 
small a matter as the loss of a wife. This time, 
however, he determined to make a political mar- 
riage. He entrusted to Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's 
old friend, the mission of finding him an eligible 
princess. Cromwell turned to Germany. He got 
the artist, Hans Holbein, to paint the portrait of 
the Duchess Anne of Cleves. That Holbein was a 
great artist everybody knows, but just what hap- 
pened to him on this particular occasion nobody 
knows. The portrait pleased Henry immensely, 
and without waiting for a personal interview, he 
demanded her hand in marriage. But there was 
trouble of several different kinds when the original 
of the painting presented herself. She was so ugly 
that Henry vowed he would not have her at any 
price, and it was only with the greatest difficulty 
that he was persuaded to stick to the contract. 
When on further acquaintance he found her dis- 
gracefully ignorant and devoid of manners, he 
wreaked his vengeance by having Cromwell be- 
headed and demanded of Parliament another 
divorce. The recent marriage was annulled, and 
Anne of Cleves passed out of history. 



Elipjaheth 9 

Two whole weeks went by before Henry was 
sufficiently in love to take unto himself another 
wife. This time it was Catherine Howard, niece 
of the Duke of Norfolk. As in the previous 
instance, however, the king found that his choice 
had been made with more haste than discretion. 
The new queen was worse than he was (and that 
is saying a good deal), of character and conduct 
so disgraceful as really to justify the course of 
the king in setting her aside. Henry's anger did 
not stop with divorce, however. She was sent to 
the same fate which Anne Boleyn had met six 
years before. 

Henry was now ready for number six. His 
ardor seemed to have cooled somewhat, and this 
time waited, apparently, upon his judgment. It 
was after much deliberation that he chose Catherine 
Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer. Like Jane Sey- 
mour, she was a woman of discretion and character, 
and had a great and good influence upon the king. 
But Henry had grown old and corpulent and ill- 
tempered. Nothing pleased him any more. Finally, 
He who knocks with impartial summons at the hut 
of the peasant and the palace of the king had come, 
and this wheezing, dropsical, relentless old despot, 
who had sat on the throne of England for thirty- 
eight years, expired, leaving some of his crimes 
unfinished. 



10 Royal Women 

It would seem that so numerously-married a man 
ought to leave plenty of heirs to his kingdom, but 
the fact is that of Henry's six wives three left him 
one child apiece. The son of Jane Seymour suc- 
ceeded him, as Edward Sixth, and before Henry 
died he added a codicil to his will stipulating that 
if Edward died without heirs (which very thing 
was destined to occur) although in his anger at 
their respective mothers he had declared both 
daughters illegitimate, the crown should descend 
first to Mary and then to Elizabeth. 

Young Edward was frail both of body and mind. 
He was very fond of his younger sister, Elizabeth, 
but he was angry and disgusted with Mary, the 
older one, who after himself was heir to the crown. 
He wished that there were some way in which he 
might obtain it for Elizabeth, but he knew that this 
would mean years of disturbance, perhaps war. He 
suffered keenly in the thought that the male line of 
the Tudors was dying with him, and perhaps it was 
the state of his health which made him listen the 
more willingly to the plan suggested by the most 
powerful men of his realm, that he should pass over 
both sisters in the matter of the succession. He did 
not mind setting aside Mary, but he knew that 
Elizabeth, with her ability and her almost perfect 
education, was in every way fitted to succeed him 
and to reign well over England. 



Elizabeth 11 

Of all the tragedies which History has charged 
up against the account of England, none is greater 
or more pathetic than that recorded on the page 
which tells so briefly and so sadly the story of the 
Lady Jane Grey. She was the grand-daughter of 
that charming little minx, Mary Tudor, youngest 
sister of Henry Eighth. Urged by the powerful 
Lord Dudley, the young king named Lady Jane as 
his successor. In vain did she declare to the emis- 
saries who were negotiating the affair her unwilling- 
ness to enter into so dangerous and so treasonable 
an enterprise. In vain she protested against the 
setting aside of Henry's two daughters, declaring, 
and rightly, that their claims far exceeded her own. 
She was persuaded that it was the wish of the people, 
and from the seclusion of her quiet English home 
she was brought to London and proclaimed queen. 
But no enthusiasm followed the act, and it was 
evident from the first that it would end in tragedy. 
Nine days only did she reign. At the end of that 
brief time she was sent to the Tower. She was 
condemned to death, but the horror of the situation 
in which she found herself gave way to calmness 
and fortitude. She knew that it was due to no 
fault of her own. Guilty in no degree of treason, 
she died — a martyr to a scheming man's ambition, 
a most pathetic victim of circumstances. 

This episode passed into history, and then fol- 



12 Royal Women 

lowed the five years' reign of Mary Tudor, one of 
the most distressing periods in England's national 
life. Sometimes we hear expressions of wonder 
that Mary was so ardent a Catholic and Elizabeth 
so staunch a Protestant. It needs only a glance 
at the circumstances to make plain why this was so. 
For Mary to deny the Catholic religion would be 
for her virtually to admit that her mother's mar- 
riage was illegal and she herself illegitimate, since 
the Holy Father had been the only one who had 
upheld her mother's cause. The same, only the 
reverse, was the case with Elizabeth. How could 
she support Catholicism when the Head of the 
Church had declared her mother's marriage invalid 
and herself of ignoble birth.? Mary was a Catholic 
of necessity. Elizabeth was a Protestant for the 
same reason. 

Mary had inherited from her mother, Catherine 
of Aragon, a reserved and haughty disposition, 
tempered with none of her father's lightness. The 
effect of adversity upon her mind had been to 
harden and embitter. She looked back over her 
father's and her brother's reigns and thought she 
had been made to endure a great deal on account 
of her faith. So she had no other thought than to 
retaliate. She conceived the idea that the way to 
be rid of her enemies was to exterminate them, and 
during the five years of her reign England reeked 



Elizabeth 18 

with blood. She, to whose name History has pre- 
fixed a terrible adjective — bloody — was one of 
the most unhappy of women, and her unhappiness 
was largely within herself. 

Elizabeth was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. She 
first saw the light through the leaded w^indows of 
old Greenwich Palace, on the seventh day of Sep- 
tember, 1534. Her birth is very quaintly recorded 
by the contemporary historian, Hall, who says: 
" The next daye, being Sundaye, between three 
and four o'clock in the after-noon, the Queene was 
delivered of a faire ladye, on which daye the Duke 
of Norfolk came home to the christening." 

Notwithstanding the disappointment which the 
king felt (and showed) over the fact that the child 
was a girl, great preparations were made for the 
christening which took place three days later at 
the Convent of the Grey Friars. The Lord Mayor, 
the Aldermen, and Council of the city of London 
got into the boats and were rowed down the Thames 
to Greenwich, where all the lords and knights and 
gentlemen were assembled. They proceeded to the 
church, in the centre of which w^as the font of 
silver over which was a canopy of crimson satin 
fringed with gold. Between the choir and the 
chancel was a closet in which a fire had been built, 
lest the royal babe should take cold when disrobed. 
The procession formed at the palace and walked to 



14 Royal Women 

the church. At the end of the long Hne came the 
Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Elizabeth's great- 
grandmother, carrying the babe in her arms. The 
child was wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, 
w ith a long train which was carried by the Countess 
of Kent. The Bishop of London received the 
babe at the door, and with all the rites and ceremo- 
nies of the CathoHc Church the future Protestant 
queen was christened and given the name of her 
father's mother, Elizabeth of York. Then fol- 
lowed the proclamation of the court crier: "God 
of His infinite goodness and mercy send a prosper- 
ous life and long to the High and INIighty Princess 
Elizabeth of England ! " 

Elizabeth spent most of her girlhood, at least 
while her father lived, at Hatfield House, one of 
the royal residences, with her brother Edward, 
under the care of a governess.* When Henry 

* To some old gossip connected with this period of Elizabeth's 
life is due the agitation which every now and then is wrought 
as to whether or not she was really a woman. There is an old 
story to the effect that the real princess died in early child- 
hood, — that the attendants feared to inform the king, and that 
while they were discussing the matter, Henry suddenly appeared 
to visit his little daughter and the only available child to sub- 
stitute in her place was a boy. It is held that it was never 
thereafter possible to undeceive the king — that the boy lived 
and reigned as England's queen, and that this explains why 
Elizabeth would never consider any proposal of marriage. There 
are many Englishmen who credit the story, among them Mr. 
Bram Strokcr, for so many years the friend and manager of 
Sir Henry Irving. Sir Henry certainly knew English history, if 
anyone did, and portrayed it faithfully. There is some little 
evidence to support the theory, but on the whole, taking into 
consideration the most important events of her career, it would 
take a most elastic imagination to accept it as truth. 



Elizabeth 15 

died, however, she went to live with the queen 
dowager, Catherine Parr. A few weeks after the 
king's death, the latter married an old lover, 
Admiral Lord Seymour, and the Admiral seemed to 
find the young step-daughter of his wife much 
more to his liking than the lady herself. Here it 
was that Elizabeth learned her first lesson in the 
exercise of her powers of fascination. That she 
became, later, absolute mistress of the art is a 
matter of history. 

Catherine died, and Seymour at once formed the 
ambitious plan of w^edding Elizabeth. But she 
would have none of him after his wife's death, and 
his schemes to carry out his plan brought his head 
speedily under the ax of the executioner. When 
Elizabeth heard of his death she remarked, "This 
day died a man of much w^it and very little judg- 
ment." 

She had been only flirting with a man old enough 
to be her father, just as in after years she used her 
wiles to attract men young enough to be her sons. 

Elizabeth's character was full of contradictions. 
She inherited from her grandfather, Henry Sev- 
enth, caution and prudence. From her father, 
Henry Eighth, she got her royal imperiousness 
and her personal charm. From her mother came 
her vanity and self-love — the true marks of the 
coquette — and her quick temper. It was told of 



16 Royal Women 

her that once, late in her hfe, her wrath burst forth 
upon some gentleman of her court, and finding 
later that she had been mistaken, she made him a 
gracious apology, ending with these words : " Well, 
well. The blood of the Boleyns was always hot, 
and I doubt me if it cooled it any fo mix it with the 
Tudors ! " 

Elizabeth was sixteen at the time of her escapade 
with Seymour. When she was twenty, her brother 
Edward, the king, died. She was at Hatfield House 
when the news was brought her that the king was 
dead and that he had named Lady Jane Grey as 
his successor. She gave illustration of her own 
characteristics as well as an illustration of the differ- 
ence between herself and her sister Mary at this 
time. When it was known that the king was dying, 
decoy letters had been sent to both sisters saying 
that the king was ill and would see them. Elizabeth 
was too wary to be caught napping in that fashion. 
She paid no attention to hers, but Mary started to 
London, and almost lost her life as the consequence. 
The messenger who brought Elizabeth news of the 
king's death offered her large grants of land and 
money if she would sign away her rights to the 
crown. She replied craftily, "So long as my 
sister Mary lives I have no rights to renounce." 
After the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey, Mary 
was proclaimed queen. Elizabeth hastened to con- 



Elizabeth 17 

gratulate her, and roclc by her side when she made 
her formal entry into London. Not many girls of 
twenty would have been capable of such procedure. 

Elizabeth's life during her sister's reign was one 
of extreme peril. A single misstep would have 
been fatal to her. The years had not improved 
Mary. She was twice her sister's age, and jealous 
to a degree. She was the unfortunate possessor of 
a morbid temperament which forever preyed upon 
itself. She was deeply in love with her handsome 
husband, Philip of Spain, but he neglected and 
despised her. She had no children to succeed her. 
At last, to crown her sorrows, the Duke of Guise 
captured Calais, the last of the English possessions 
in France, and Mary never recovered from this 
blow, which she felt to be a stain upon the national 
honor. She felt it so keenly that she said to one 
of her ministers, "If after I am dead you will 
open my heart you will find Calais written there." 

So these were critical times for Elizabeth. The 
Spanish Ambassador demanded her execution as a 
condition of Mary's marriage to Philip. Mary's 
answer is on record — she would try to satisfy him 
in this particular. But she found herself less power- 
ful than her father had been. She had to reckon 
with her Council, and in it strong and peremptory 
language began to be heard. Mary desired above 
all else that Elizabeth should embrace the Catholic 



18 Royal Women 

religion. She recognized that Elizabeth was the 
next heir, and, naturally, wished to see the church 
continued after she was gone. She sent for Eliza- 
beth to come to London. When she came she 
refused to see her and kept her strictly guarded 
in a distant wing of the palace. They had but one 
interview. This took place late at night, and Philip 
was concealed behind the curtains to hear her replies. 
Mary asked her promise to attend the mass at least. 
Elizabeth was cautious in the extreme, but her reply 
contained no promise. After this her fate was the 
subject of much discussion at the Council table. At 
last she was summoned to appear before them and 
declare herself, and when asked to state her belief 
as to the real presence of the Saviour at the Sacra- 
ment of the Holy Communion, she made her now 
famous reply : 

Christ was the word that spake it ; 
He took the bread and brake it ; 
And what His words did make it, 
That I believe and take it. 

Her reply silenced the queen and the Council 
forever. Never again did either attempt to question 
her as to her belief. Neither Catholic nor Protestant 
can impugn the orthodoxy of her explanation of the 
sublimest mystery of our Christian faith. 

In spite of this, however, and against the strong 



Elizabeth 19 

protest of some of the lords, Elizabeth was con- 
fined in the Tower. Two of the Council were 
appointed to conduct her thither. One of them 
was the Earl of Sussex. He was indignant and 
disgusted beyond measure when his companion 
began giving instructions as to her safe-keeping 
and suggesting measures of unnecessary rigor, and 
he said to him : 

" Take heed, milord, that you go not beyond 
your commission. She is our king's daughter and, 
as you well know, the next of blood. Therefore 
deal with her now that you may not have to answer, 
if it so happen, for your dealings hereafter." 

When they conducted her to the inner gate, 
instead of passing through it, she sat down on the 
cold, damp stone, with the evident intention of not 
entering that prison which had proved so fatal to 
her race. The officer of the guard said to her : 

" Madame, you had best come in out of the rain. 
In truth, you sit unwholesomely there." 

"Better here than in a worse place," she an- 
swered; "for God knows, not I, whither you 
bring me." 

The officer was an old, white-haired man. He 
had seen many of the tragedies of the Tower ; but 
when he saw this fair young girl, who would, he 
had every reason to believe, meet the same fate as 
her mother, he burst into tears. When Elizabeth 



20 Royal Women 

saw this she promptly arose and followed hhn, 
telling him not to weep — that knowing her to be 
innocent, he ought to sustain and comfort rather 
than to discourage her. 

Medieval London was in its prime at this time. 
Wherever there is a city of historic interest, there 
is, also, in almost every instance, a river of equal 
historic interest. Especially is this true of London. 
During the early years of its existence it was always 
known as London-on-Thames. When we recall the 
history of England it takes but little imagination 
to picture some of the scenes which have been 
reflected in the silver waters of the river which 
flows by London — the gorgeous pageants which 
have passed over its surface, "with youth at the 
prow and pleasure at the helm." The Thames has 
been called The Silent Highway of England. How 
often must it have reechoed joj^ous shouts and 
merriment ! How many the royal barges which 
have floated down it bearing merry parties from 
Greenwich to the Tower, from Westminster and 
Whitehall to Richmond, Hampton Court, and 
Windsor! How many, alas, the sad and silent 
craft conveying state prisoners from their trials 
to their last prison and landing them at the wet 
steps of the Traitors' Gate ! The river has had its 
shadows and its brilliant lights, and doubtless many 







k:*' 



%^ i^^* ' I 



^-IMI 






The Tower of London 




Traitors' Gate 



Elizabeth 21 

a state secret lies securely locked in its silent bosom. 
Like the Rhine and the Seine and the Danube, the 
Thames has inspired many an artist and poet to 
noble effort. 

For more than eight centuries there stood on the 
banks of the Thames an old Roman fortification 
which later became the Tower of London. What 
volumes of English history are bound up in the 
London Tower! It has been successively a fort- 
ress, a palace, and a prison. While it existed long 
before the Norman conquest, and its construction 
doubtless took many years to complete, it is sup- 
posed to have been finished about 1090, in the 
reign of William Rufus, the second son of William 
the Conqueror. In the medieval days it was 
regarded as impregnable, capable of withstanding 
any sort of attack. One thinks he is living in those 
days again when he visits the London Tower. 
Visitors are allowed after five o'clock only by per- 
mission, and the pennission is well worth obtaining. 
It is at night that the Tower is of greatest interest. 
Then it is still the medieval fortress. The ancient 
ceremony of locking the gates still takes place. 
After this Is done, if you have permission, you may 
enter, giving the password, which is changed each 
day. The guard is changed, the keys delivered to 
the Lord Mayor of London. It is all of absorbing 



22 Royal Women 

interest. One forgets the twentieth century civiliza- 
tion in such places as this where the ancient customs 
still obtain. 

From the time of William the Conqueror to the 
reign of Charles Second most of the kings used the 
Tower as the royal residence. Many of the royal 
children were born there. Now, however, we think 
of it only as the great state prison of one of the 
most powerful nations on the earth. In it have 
been confined some of the noblest of English men 
and women, as well as many others who doubtless 
richly deserved their fate. To most of those who 
went there it was merely the threshold of the 
scaffold. 

There were two places of execution connected 
with the Tower. One was within the walls and was 
know^n as the Tower Green. The other was without 
and was called Tower Hill. The Tower Green is a 
spot of hallowed memories in English history. Only 
a few years ago, by command of Queen Victoria, it 
was marked off and railed in. Here, in 1483, Lord 
Hastings met his death, as did afterwards Anne 
Boleyn, Margaret Pole, daughter of the Duke of 
Clarence, the Lady Jane Grey, Katherine Howard, 
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and Sir Walter 
Raleigh, all but two of whom were intimately 
connected with the story of Elizabeth of England. 

One can scarcely think of historic London with- 



Elizabeth 23 

out mention of the London Bridge, where, according 
to the old song: 

Proud and lowly, beggar and lord, 

Over the bridge they go! 
Eags and velvet, fetters and sword, 

Poverty, pomp, and woe! 
Laughing, weeping, hurrying ever. 

Hour by hour they flit along ; 
While below the mighty river 

Sings them all a mocking song : 

Hurry along! Sorrow and song! 

All is vanity under the sun! 
Velvet and rags ! So the world wags, 

Till the river no more shall run! 

But, Hke the river, like everything else in life, 
historical periods glide in, run their course, and 
either take new form or fade away. No wonder 
that Elizabeth, when she remembered all that had 
been, cried out when she was compelled to enter the 
Tower through the Traitors' Gate, " Here landeth 
as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever trod these 
stairs. To Thee, O God, I speak it, having no 
friend but Thee!" 

She was released from the Tower, at last, and 
conveyed to Woodstock, one of the royal residences 
which has been long since demolished. There was 
an episode in connection with her stay at Wood- 
stock which is worth the telling. She was strictly 
guarded at all times, and the guard was in charge 



24 Boyal Women 

of Sir Henry Bedingfield, who was most assiduous 
in enforcing the strictest rules upon her. After she 
became queen, carrying out her determination not 
to employ her sister Mary's tactics by punishing 
her enemies, she sent one day for Sir Henry. He 
obeyed the summons with fear and trembling, but 
when he presented himself he was told that he 
might keep his rank and titles, his lands, and his 
money, but that whenever she had a prisoner whom 
she wished particularly well guarded he could rest 
assured that she would send for him ! 

It is said that all things come to him who waits. 
It was so with Elizabeth. Tortured bodily and 
mentally, Mary was dying, childless. She made of 
Elizabeth three requests before her death — first, 
that she would retain and be good to her servants ; 
second, that she would pay all sums of money owed 
privately by her; third, that she would continue 
the church as she had established it in England. 
Elizabeth was to be notified of her sister's death 
by the sending of a little black-enameled ring which 
Mary always w^ore; but before the messenger with 
the ring arrived, a great deputation of nobles 
waited upon her and hailed her Queen of England. 
She replied to their demonstration with a line from 
the Scriptures: "This is the Lord's doing; it is 
marvelous in our eyes." 



Elizabeth 25 

Elizabeth was now twenty-five. She was tall and 
graceful and beautiful. She was in every way 
fitted by education to fill and grace her high posi- 
tion. The Tudors were always fond of learning, 
but she surpassed them all. She spoke Latin and 
Greek not only well but fluently. Her love of 
classical culture lasted to the end of her days. 
Amid the cares of her later years we find, in Roger 
Ascham's diary, this : "After dinner I w^ent up to 
read with the Queen's Majesty that noble oration 
of Demosthenes against Aeschines." In another 
instance it is recorded that she used her Latin to 
rebuke the insolence of the Polish Ambassador. 
She spoke French and Italian as readily as her 
mother tongue, and her handwriting was truly 
beautiful. Old letters of hers which have been 
preserved look like the finest engraving. During 
the reigns of her brother and sister she had applied 
herself diligently to her studies, and in addition 
to her qualifications in this line, she was politic to 
a degree. Whether she was born with or acquired 
this latter characteristic matters not. Perhaps the 
greatest gift which Nature gave her was the ability 
to decide quickly and correctl}^ the problems she 
had to meet. 

The times were stormy in England when Eliza- 
beth came to the throne. The signs were hard to 



26 Royal Women 

read. None knew this better than she, and it was 
due to her sagacity that her coronation was of the 
simplest character.* 

Someone has seen fit to utter the accusation that 
no matter how high a station in Hfe woman may 
reach, no one of them has ever yet been able to 
ehminate the " eternal feminine." Ehzabeth's con- 
duct on this occasion justified the remark to a cer- 
tain extent. When she had been anointed with oil 
by the Bishop, she promptly retired behind a screen 
to change her gown, saying to her ladies in attend- 
ance, " Truly, that oil is grease and smells ill ! " 

When a few years of her reign had gone by, the 
minds of her ministers and advisers became exer- 
cised about the succession. It was naturally sup- 
posed that the Queen would marry and in the 

♦ Only one bishop officiated. She handed him a book and in the 
presence of the multitude requested him to read the Gospel and 
the Epistle in E'nglish. This was done. Then the mass was said in 
Latin, according to the ancient custom. The coronation of Elizabeth 
took place on Sunday, January 15, 1559, in Westminster Abbey. 
The one bishop who officiated was Bishop Oglethorpe. One of 
the most interesting moments of the coronation was then (and 
is now) the presentation of the glove. First, the ring is placed 
on the sovereign's hand, and immediately after, some one of the 
lords (the position being hereditary in his family) presents the 
king or queen, as the case may be, with a richly embroidered 
glove. The peer who has the honor of presenting the glove wears 
the title Lord of the Manor. This is one of the few picturesque 
feudal ceremonies still retained in the coronation of the English 
kings and queens. It dates back to the Middle Ages. The first 
Lord of the Manor was a member of the Turnivell family of 
Buckinghamshire. At the time of the Reformation, when the 
monasteries were dissolved, the Earl of Shrewsbury held the 
office, but he exchanged it to Henry VIII for other privileges. 
Now the Duke of Norfolk is Lord of the Manor, and the present 
duke had the honor of presenting the glove to George V whea 
he was crowned in 1911. 



Elizabeth 27 

ordinary course of events present the nation with 
an heir. As she showed no disposition to wed, she 
was waited upon by a deputation from Parhament 
and urged to choose for herself a husband. There- 
upon she hurled the thunderbolt. She declared her 
intention to live and die a virgin queen. Neither 
Parliament nor the people could understand why 
she would not marry, yet that she was moved by 
many motives to remain single is unquestionable. 
There is no doubt that her adventure with Sey- 
mour, although that was now ancient history, had 
taught her one thing, and that, having learned it 
well in her youth, she forgot it not in her age. 
That was how great a part selfish ambition was 
bound to play in any project which concerned her 
marriage. She learned then and there that it was 
the crown she would wear, the crown which would 
be hers in her own right because she was her father's 
daughter, to gain which she did not have to make 
a marriage distasteful to her, or any marriage at 
all for that matter, was the candle around which 
all the moths in Europe would flutter. The fact 
that she was a princess of the blood, a young, 
beautiful, well-educated, and accomplished woman, 
would play a small and secondary part. Moreover, 
her sister Mary's marital unhappiness had made a 
great impression upon her, to say nothing of her 
erratic father's exploits matrimonial. There is no 



28 Royal Women 

doubt that Elizabeth determined not to wed while 
she was still a young girl, and because she became 
convinced that love might be for the village maiden, 
but not for the heiress to the crown of Merrie 
England. Certain it is that after she came to the 
throne she never allowed her heart to speak. If her 
senses did, she had them well under control. 

All English men, of course, were subjects. This 
may have explained why she declined to wed a man 
of her own country. But when the suitors were 
of royal blood and boasted pedigrees to which no 
Tudor ever pretended, when they were kings in 
their own right or heirs-apparent to distinguished 
crowns, the foreign suitors who came over to Eng- 
land to woo the fickle daughter of Anne Boleyn, 
why did she refuse these, the most eligible all 
Europe could produce .? No answer unless it be the 
old one. If she could not be loved as a woman she 
would not be loved as a queen. Not otherwise can 
her actions be explained. Perhaps she had a desire 
to get out of life all there was in it. At any rate, 
as soon as she came to the throne she began that 
long series of personal conquests which covered a 
period of more than forty years. Her coquetry 
with her admirers and lovers is a matter of history. 

At the time of her confinement in the Tower it 
was full of political prisoners, and among them 
was a man whose name was forever afterwards 



Elizabeth 29 

linked with her own — Robert Dudley, Earl of 
Leicester. There was a peculiar coincidence in 
connection with these two. They were born not 
only on the same day, but at the very same hour. 
They had been playmates in childhood, and Dudley, 
in his MemoireSy said that he had known the queen 
intimately since her eighth year. Whether anyone 
ever knew Elizabeth intimately or not is a question, 
but if anyone did it was doubtless Dudley. It is 
thought by many that notwithstanding the caution 
of the jailors some sort of secret understanding was 
established between them while they were in the 
Tower, for in less than a week after she became 
queen she bestowed a signal favor upon him. She 
made him her Master of Horse and loaded him 
with honors. It would seem that this act must have 
originated from some powerful motive which does 
not appear upon the surface of history. 

There are those who contend that for Dudley 
Elizabeth held the only genuine affection she ever 
knew, but in the light of after events this cannot 
be accepted as a fact. She would not have married 
him under any circumstances. In the first place, 
Dudley was looked upon by the peers as an upstart. 
The first Dudley had been beheaded by Elizabeth's 
father, the second one by her sister Mary. Was 
Her Majesty, then, likely to bestow herself upon a 
member of such a house.? Moreover, the Earl of 



30 Royal Women 

Leicester was a man of courts. He was good- 
looking. His eyes were fine, his features good. 
He was tall and straight and graceful. He sang 
well, danced well, played well, but in qualities of 
the nobler order he was poor. True faith, pure 
heart, loyal words were not among his gifts. Wise 
or witty speech never passed his lips. Good counsel 
was beyond him. Elizabeth was doubtless fond of 
the sparkling creature. She allowed him much of 
her society, but let no one imagine for a moment 
that she was blind to his faults. 

The queen was passionately fond of admiration. 
She would lure a man on by smiles and promises, 
only to dismiss him coldly as soon as he declared 
himself. When once she had a man desperately in 
love with her, she left him to go on loving her, 
while she turned her attention to newer and more 
attractive fields. If one of the men with whom 
she played saw fit to marry, she promptly fell into 
a fit of temper which made life miserable for all 
around her — and it was so with Dudley. Unbeknown 
to her he wooed and won the beautiful Amy 
Robsart. He kept his marriage secret as long as 
he could, and Elizabeth had the usual fit of wrath 
when she found that he had deceived her. Even 
after Lady Leicester's tragic death, when England 
would have been glad to see her wed even a subject, 
she showed Dudley no more favor than before. 



Elizabeth 31 

However, the most famous of all the royal visits 
which Elizabeth made during her reign were those 
to Kenilworth Castle. How merciless a monarch 
Time is ! Ruined arches, fallen walls, mute remind- 
ers of the olden glory, are all that remain of Lord 
Leicester's once-splendid castle, the floors of which 
covered seven acres, through the halls and corridors 
of which the daughter of Henry Eighth and her 
courtiers used to walk in the days that are gone. 

To the suitors, crowned and uncrowned, who 
sought a share in Elizabeth's heart, a seat on her 
throne, she listened and smiled and replied in soft, 
postponing words. Until the wars with France and 
Scotland kindled by her sister's policy died out, 
she dared not do otherwise. She looked upon 
France and Scotland as natural allies. With them 
she longed for peace. With Spain and Rome she 
saw no signs of peace. With these she knew she 
must fight and win. One reason for this was that 
her sister's widowed husband, Philip of Spain, was 
on her list of suitors. But she knew him too well. 
He wrote to the Spanish Ambassador who was 
representing him: "Throw all the obstacles pos- 
sible in the way of her marrying a subject. Give 
her some crumbs of hope. Of course, she must not 
expect me to stay with her. I wish to live else- 
where. Show her these conditions." 

He did. Elizabeth promptly disposed of both 



32 Royal Women 

the conditions and their instigator, much to Philip's 
chagrin. It was England he wished, not England's 
queen. He determined that what he could not 
obtain by marriage he would get by force. So he 
fitted out a fleet, the Invincible Armada, and sent it 
forth for the humiliation of the woman who had 
scorned him. Here, again, his plan failed. When 
the Armada arrived off the coast, the English fleet 
under Sir Francis Drake was waiting. The battle 
was begun, but Providence took it out of the hands 
of men. A terrible hurricane arose. The Spanish 
vessels, not built to withstand such a tempest, were 
battered to pieces in the gale, and the Invincible 
Armada, what little was left of it, skulked home to 
Spain. 

Neither Parliament nor the people were willing 
to relinquish the hope that the queen would wed. 
Still they urged her. One day the old Puritan 
preacher. Whitehead, spoke to her of the common 
sentiment. With her usual flattery she replied : 

"Why, truly, Whitehead, I like thee all the 
better that thou remainest unmarried." 

The bluff old Puritan looked her straight in the 
face and answered : "And in truth, Madame, I like 
thee all the worse for the same reason ! " 

While Elizabeth ruled in England, affairs in 
France were in charge of that inexplicable crea- 



Elizabeth 33 

ture, Catherine dl Medicls. She was holding the 
throne for her young son and having much her 
own way in the process. A matrimonial alliance 
between France and England was too brilliant a 
chimera to be hastily abandoned. So this restless 
intriguante empowered the French Ambassador to 
propose a marriage between the maiden queen of 
England and her eldest son, the young king of 
France. Elizabeth expressed her appreciation of 
the honor offered her in the shape of a husband 
almost young enough to be her son, but declined 
the offer, for obvious reasons. She usually man- 
aged to make her foreign suitors the laughing-stock 
of every boudoir and embassy in Europe. 

In the long list of EHzabeth's lovers. Sir Walter 
Raleigh must not be forgotten. The story is that 
one day when the queen w^alked through the grounds 
at Windsor she came suddenly upon a handsome 
3^oung man who, seeing that between himself and 
Her Majesty was a wet and muddy spot of ground, 
threw off his crimson velvet cloak and laid it down 
that she might not w^et her feet. His gallantry 
was rewarded by a command to appear at Court, 
and while waiting to be admitted he is said to have 
scratched upon the window-pane in the royal ante- 
room these words : " Fain w ould I climb but that I 
fear to fall." 



34 Royal Women 

The next day Elizabeth is said to have dis- 
covered the words and to have written under them: 
" If thou hast fear, then do not cHmb at all." 

Whether these legends have any fact for founda- 
tion, or are the mere anecdotes of history none can 
say. Certain it is, however, that Sir Walter was a 
great favorite at Court, and that section of our 
own country which he colonized was named Virginia 
in honor of the virgin queen of England. 

In one event, perhaps one only, might Elizabeth 
have yielded and chosen for herself a husband. 
There was always a fleeting shadow on England's 
northern horizon and that shadow was embodied 
in the bewitching person of Mary Stuart. She 
had be€n married to Francis Second, the young 
king of France — a marriage made in spite of 
Elizabeth's protest. Should a son be born of this 
union, what would he be.^^ First, the Dauphin of 
France ; second, the Duke of Rothsay of Scotland ; 
third, the heir-apparent to the English crown. 
Three crowns might be united upon one small lad's 
head. If this should happen, might not the two 
island kingdoms, England and Scotland, become 
dependencies of France.'^ This was not to be 
thought of, and this incident alone would have 
moved Elizabeth to marry. But Mary had no 
children by her first marriage, and Elizabeth was 
free to pursue her way unmolested. 








X 



Elizabeth 35 

One thing which had greatly impressed the 
people during Elizabeth's youth was her extreme 
plainness of dress. One writer declares that she 
looked like a gray nun. As the years went by, 
however, and she became firmly established upon 
her throne, she considered it no longer necessary 
to do this, and indulged to the hmit her passionate 
fondness for gay attire. According to contempo- 
rary chroniclers, the gifts she received at the New 
Year usually supphed her with money, wardrobe, 
and jewels. Most of the peers and peeresses of the 
realm, the bishops, the chief officers of the state, 
and Her Majesty's household down to the master 
of the pantry and the head cook, sent to the queen 
at the New Year a box consisting of either a sum 
of money, jewels, or wearing apparel. It is re- 
corded that on one occasion the Archbishop of 
Canterbury sent her forty pounds, the Archbishop 
of York thirty pounds. The peers gave in propor- 
tion. The peeresses presented rich gowns, petti- 
coats, stockings, garters, and other articles of 
wearing apparel. Her physician, contrary to the 
custom of those of the present day, sent her a box 
of foreign sweetmeats — perhaps with a view to 
getting himself sent for next morning — while her 
apothecary sent a box of green ginger and a box 
of candied ginger, mayhap to counteract the effect 
of the doctor's sweetmeats. One Ambrose Lupo 



36 Royal Women 

presented her with a box of lute-strings; while 
Smith, the royal dustman, gave Her Majesty two 
rolls of cambric. The gorgeousness of Elizabeth's 
gowns is a matter of history. One of them was 
the famous peacock dress, which she had made as 
symbolic of herself. The heavy silk is woven to 
represent an eye (in color like the spots in the 
peacock's tail), an ear, and winding in and out 
between the two, a serpent. She meant to imply 
that naught in her kingdom escaped her — that she 
had as many eyes as there were spots in the pea- 
cock's tail, an ear to hear all that was said in her 
kingdom, and was as crafty as the serpent. 

Many of the interesting spots of the London of 
today date from the reign of Elizabeth, but like 
other landmarks of historic England, they are 
gradually passing away. Windsor Castle was her 
favorite haunt. Here she passed much of her time. 
In the evening, just before dinner, almost invariably 
she walked for an hour in the grounds, unless pre- 
vented by the wind, to which she had a strong 
aversion. Rain, it seems, did not disturb her. She 
took great pleasure in walking under a large 
umbrella in the wet weather along the terrace on 
the north front of the castle. When first she came 
to Windsor the grounds were neglected and stony, 
but the beautiful terraces which were built by her 




Queen Elizabeth wearing tlie peacock dress 



Elizabeth 37 

order remain as she left them, and a part of the 
path is still known as Queen Elizabeth's Walk. 

Of all the places connected with Elizabeth's life, 
the most romantic and interesting is old Lambeth 
Palace. Historians who are not fond of Elizabeth 
make much of the fact that she never allowed the 
subject of her mother's marriage to the king, her 
father, to be discussed in any way ; never took any 
steps to have it legalized by her Parliament; in 
fact, never displayed any sentiment whatever on 
the subject. Doubtless she felt that the fact that 
she w^as queen of England was in itself sufficient, 
and both established her mother's innocence and 
legitimatized her own birth. 

But in order to see a side of Elizabeth's character 
which historians have studiously let alone, one should 
make a visit to Lambeth Palace. Once inside its great 
gates, he may sit downr on a rude bench made of 
one of the old oaks for which England is famous. 
Here a white-haired caretaker will join him, and 
he may ask him what there is of interest at Lambeth 
Palace. The caretaker will tell him (and the state- 
ment will be strictly true, as the position is heredi- 
tary in the family) that he is a descendant of the 
Archbishop of London who occupied the palace 
during the reign of Elizabeth and who was her 
mother's confessor. He will tell him that on the 



38 Royal Women 

bench where he sits she sat, in the days long gone 
by, while his ancestor, the Archbishop, told her all 
about her mother — how she looked and talked and 
acted, how she loved the king and her baby, how 
she suffered unjustly and died. He may show him 
the Archbishop's diary, in which he wrote : " Today 
came as usual Her Gracious Majesty the Queen, 
who never tires of hearing all that concerns the 
Lady Anne Boleyn, her mother, and who has always 
some new question to ask concerning her. Today it 
was of her father's harshness when the Lady Anne 
begged him not to send her forth to death, and Her 
Majesty shed many tears when I told her (for I 
must even speak the truth when she asks me), and 
^e ever seemeth comforted when I, having spoken 
that which grieved her, do assure her of her mother, 
the Lady Anne's innocence, for I do know this for 
truth, I who received her last confession before her 
sorrowful end." 

The most interesting period of Elizabeth's 
career embraced the years of her long and bitter 
controversy with Mary Stuart. There is perhaps 
no character in history which was in the end so 
different from that which in the beginning it gave 
promise of being, as the Scottish queen. Mary was 
but nineteen when her young husband, Francis 
Second, died. Willingly would she have remained 
in France, but her two ambitious uncles, the Duke of 








London Bridge 




Queen Elizabeth's Walk at ^^'ind.'■ 



Elizabeth 39 

Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, insisted upon 
her return to her own country. The fierce and 
seemingly interminable struggle between Elizabeth 
and Mary began at once. It darkened the lives of 
these two royal women ever afterward. It pursued 
Mary to the block and filled the remainder of 
Elizabeth's days with shadows. 

The quarrel was about the succession. Mary 
consented to acknowledge that the right of the 
English crown was vested in Elizabeth and her 
posterity, if Elizabeth, in turn, w^ould declare her 
heir-presumptive. This Elizabeth refused to do, 
declaring that the subject of the succession should 
never be discussed during her lifetime. " How is 
it possible," she asked, " for anyone to love me 
whose interest it is to see me dead.? Human affec- 
tion is inconstant. Man is prone to worship the 
rising sun. It was so in my father's time. It will 
be so in mine if I declare the succession." This 
was the tiny wedge which opened the rivalry (and 
bitter it grew to be) between Elizabeth of England 
and Mary of Scotland. It is an undeniable fact 
that it takes two people to quarrel, and in this case 
there were certainly two. Much of the antagonism 
was personal. Elizabeth was jealous of Mary's 
youth, her beauty, and attractiveness. She would 
willingly have kept her out of sight, but she would 
never have let her personal animosity extend to 



40 Royal Women 

such length as to decree her death, had not Mary, 
in such persistent fashion, troubled her kingdom. 
Mary had determined that she would force Eliza- 
beth to declare her rights as heir to the English 
crown, and during the years which followed she 
left no stone unturned to carry out her plans. 

Elizabeth saw whither Mary's conduct was lead- 
ing her, and became greatly distressed. She realized 
that, sooner or later, the affair would pass beyond 
her own power to manage. Already her Council 
and her Parliament were warning her. Some went 
so far as to say that there would be no safety in 
England till Mary was out of the way. She did 
not wish to punish her unless forced to do so, but 
when it was proved beyond doubt that Mary had 
taken part in a plot which had for its ultimate end 
the assassination of Elizabeth, it became necessary 
to take rigorous steps in the matter. 

Mary's friends have contended that, not being 
an English subject, she could not be lawfully tried 
and punished in England; but this is the rankest 
nonsense. Any government has the right to detain 
a dangerous public enemy. No government ever 
did or ever will let pass an attempt on the life of 
its sovereign. If Napoleon, while a prisoner at 
St. Helena, had entered into a conspiracy to seize 
the island and had succeeded in the attempt, who 
would have blamed him.? But if he had attempted 



Elizabeth 41 

to accomplish his end by assassinating the Governor, 
Sir Hudson Lowe, what would have happened? 
Assuredly he would have been hanged. 

For a long time it was Elizabeth alone who stood 
between Mary and the scaffold. The council 
stormed and threatened. She obstinately refused 
to sign the death warrant. It has been taken for 
granted that she really desired Mary's execution 
and was glad of an opportunity to impress this 
fact upon the people, but her reluctance to sign 
the document was too genuine. She was not of 
an altogether generous disposition, but the records 
of her court show that she was never in any hurry 
to punish the disaffected or even to weed them out 
of her kingdom. Since her accession only two 
English peers had been put to death, though many 
had richly deserved it. For fifteen years she pre- 
vented Mary's execution, and this at a great and 
ever-increasing risk to herself. Now the warrant 
was drawn up and lay before her. She was hard 
pressed, but still she hesitated. She flinched from 
the undeserved censure which she felt was in store 
for her if she took the step. She foresaw that the 
individual blame would fall on her alone, and it did. 

All through November, December, and January 
she hesitated. Her aspect became most gloomy. 
She was to be seen wandering in out-of-the-way 
places, arguing fiercely with herself. Not infre- 



42 Royal Women 

quently she was heard to mutter the old Latin 
saying, ne feriare feri — ^kill or be killed. The 
words revealed her thoughts. The execution seemed 
inevitable. Doubless she wished that someone 
would quietly dispatch Mary and save her the 
trouble, but the days of Thomas a Becket were 
long gone by. At last, when she could no longer 
withstand the demands of her ministry, she signed 
Mary's death warrant, and then sternly forbade 
that anyone should ever speak to her again upon a 
subject about which she did not wish to be troubled 
further. One thing more, however, was necessary. 
The warrant must be sealed and delivered to the 
secretary of the Council, with instructions to carry 
it out. Again she delayed. Hoping to gain time, 
she signed and delivered it without instructions. 
On the morning of the ninth of February, news 
that the execution had taken place at Fotheringay 
found its way to the queen. She stormed and raved 
and became actually hysterical. Much has been 
written about this episode. It is held by many 
that her anger was assumed, that she wished to 
make the people believe that she had been taken 
advantage of in the matter; but undoubtedly, at 
the last moment, Mary was put to death without 
her knowledge. Elizabeth was never the same 
again. It makes no difference what the motive was 
which caused her to hesitate so long over the sign- 




Klizabeth lu'sitating to sign tlu- order for 
Mary's execution 



Elizabeth 43 

ing of the warrant, there is no doubt that the death 
of Mary Stuart had a profound effect upon her. 

What a period of literary splendor was the reign 
of Elizabeth ! It was unsurpassed in the history of 
the world. The pens of the master writers sup- 
ported her throne, and one can only conjecture 
what the effect would have been upon her reign 
and reputation had they turned their power against 
instead of for her. This brilliant period was not con- 
fined to England. In the other countries of Europe 
there were great men. There was Martin Luther 
the reformer, in Germany ; Sully, the great states- 
man, in France. There were Ariosto and Tasso in 
Italy, Cervantes in Spain. There were the great 
artists — Michael Angelo, Titian, and Correggio. 
There was Palestrina, the father of Italian music. 
In England, Elizabeth had gathered about her 
court Francis Bacon, the philosopher, Hooker, the 
eminent divine, Gresham, the great merchant. Sir 
Francis Drake, the seaman and circumnavigator, 
Philip Sidney, noblest of courtiers, Spenser, 
Raleigh and Essex, renowned in song and story, 
and Shakespeare, the Immortal, whose magic art 
has never been excelled. 

After the death of Mary Stuart sixteen years 
went by. The long shadows began to fall across 
Elizabeth's pathway. Her brilliant reign was draw- 
ing to a close, and what woman in all the world 



44 Royal Women 

ever founti herself in a position more profoundly 
pitiable? Where was now that throng of lovers 
and courtiers who had danced attendance upon her 
in her j^ounger daj^s? All were gone. Arundel was 
dead, Pickering was dead, Leicester was dead, and 
with characteristic forgetfulness of what she did 
not choose to remember, another of her most faith- 
ful admirers was soon to be no more. Late in the 
afternoon of a bleak day in December, a black 
barge with the royal crown painted on the bow, 
especially used to convey certain criminals to the 
Tower, moored itself alongside the Traitors' Gate. 
In the stern of the boat sat a man wrapped in a 
velvet cloak lined with satin, his face shaded by a 
broad gray hat adorned with handsome plumes — a 
man of fine countenance and well-knit figure, evi- 
dently a personage of note. It was Sir Walter 
Raleigh, gallant soldier, courtier, adventurer, 
writer, philosopher — tried on a trumped-up charge 
at Winchester, found guilty of treason and sen- 
tenced to imprisonment in the Tower. Here he 
made his first stop on the way to his death. Up 
and down the long corridor he used to walk, and 
doubtless he reflected more than once on the ingrati- 
tude of humanity. Elizabeth had forgotten him 
who had covered the damp ground with his velvet 
cloak, that the fairy feet of his queen might pass 
over unsoiled. 



Elizabeth 45 

And where are now all those things which should 
accompany old age — affection, tenderness, hosts of 
friends? Honor and obedience, it is true, she still 
had, but as the years went by she was haunted by 
the consciousness that among all those who still did 
her reverence there was not only who really loved 
her, not one who really cared whether her life should 
be prolonged or not. She had tasted the satisfac- 
tion of leading the life which pleased her. She had 
played the great game of politics, for which she 
was especially gifted. Now she realized that they 
who have not loved in youth shall not find love in 
old age. She had never shared with a husband the 
joys and sorrows of life. She had never nursed her 
children or rocked their tiny cradles. She had come 
to old age without knowing the varied interests that 
cluster around a family. Now she sat, uncared 
for, perhaps uncaring, in the twilight which would 
be followed by the night. All that goes to make life 
beautiful had passed her by. Was the crown of 
Merrie England a recompense.? Not so. "When 
thou dost feel Time knocking at the gates," she 
murmured, "all these fooleries will please thee less." 

Of all the forgotten treasures of the past which 
the students of the present day have brought to 
light, royal letters are not only the most interesting 
but are calculated to render the greatest service in 
the cause of truth. What evidence can afford so 



46 Royal Women 

fair a test of the moral qualities and intellectual 
powers of those who have played a conspicuous 
part in the arena of public life as that furnished 
by their own pens? It is not always that we find 
in the public records of a nation or a court the true 
story of those who dwelt therein. It is the general 
impression that if Elizabeth had a genuine affec- 
tion for anyone it was for Dudley. Sir Walter 
Scott's novel, Kenilworth, keeps this impression 
before our minds, but the old documents of the 
period disprove it. Of all the royal flatterers who 
crowded around Elizabeth from her girlhood to 
her death, it was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 
who obtained the strongest hold upon her affections. 
All the later years of her life were saddened by his 
follies and misfortunes. She made him Governor- 
General of Ireland, but he found himself unable 
to cope with the difficulties of his position, and 
contrary to the queen's express orders, he returned 
to England. 

She punished him by ordering him into retire- 
ment in his own house. He was brought before 
the Council to justify, if he could, his mismanage- 
ment of Irish affairs. He refused to speak, but 
threw himself at the Queen's feet and asked her 
pardon. Elizabeth accepted his apology but did 
not intend to restore him to favor without letting 
him suffer the pangs of despair, at least for a 



Elizabeth 47 

while. All would have gone well had not Essex 
lost his temper. In his humiliation, he suddenly 
flared up and poured forth a torrent of anger and 
disappointment. He called the queen an old woman. 
He said she was as crooked in mind as she was in 
body ; and never, since the days of insulted Juno, 
has any woman, much less Elizabeth of England, 
patiently endured such language. Elizabeth sternly 
bade him begone from her presence; but after he 
was gone there began the struggle in her heart 
between her affectionate regard for him on the one 
hand and her pride and sense of justice on the 
other. She had passed the time of life when a 
woman permits herself to be swayed by her emo- 
tions, and what might have been impossible for her 
to do in days gone by she now did with resolution 
and firmness. Essex lost all control of himself and 
actually took part in an attempt to overthrow the 
throne. For this he was arrested, tried, convicted, 
and sent to the Tower. 

During the whole miserable affair, the queen, 
with her profound insight, could not but perceive 
the true secret of Essex's folly and crime. He was 
mad, desperate. She knew very well that at heart 
he was not disloyal, that in the midst of his insane 
bravado he would have fought to the death for her 
had she so much as smiled upon him in the old-time 
fashion. It was only a lover's madness, but it 



48 Royal Women 

placed the queen in the same position in which she 
had found herself with Mary Stuart. Essex was 
condemned to death. From the Tower he wrote 
her a letter ending with these words : 

Haste, letter, to that happy presence whence only unhappy 
I am banished. Kiss that fair, correcting hand, and say that 
thou comest from languishing, pining, despairing 

Essex. 

There lay his death warrant before her, but she 
could not persuade herself to sign it. Why.? 

Once during their younger days, when Essex 
had been about to depart on a mission of some 
kind, while he was pouring out his lover's grief and 
bewailing his hapless lot in having to leave her, 
the queen had given him a ring, assuring him if he 
were ever in peril or in need of her assistance she 
would come to him if he would return to her this 
token of her royal pledge. Now he was condemned 
to die and Elizabeth remembered her promise. Day 
after day went by while she waited, believing, 
hoping even, that her obstinate lover would send 
back the ring. But it came not, and moved to 
desperation by what she considered his defiance, she 
signed the fatal document and the sentence was 
carried out without delay. 

Some years later the old Countess of Notting- 
ham lay dying and sent in haste for the queen. 



Elizabeth 49 

When she arrived the Countess told her that shortly 
before his death Essex had given her a ring, sol- 
emnly charging her to place it in the queen's own 
hands. Her husband had persuaded her not to do it. 
Here it was! 

Elizabeth stood absolutely transfixed with horror. 
Essex, then, had remembered. He had struggled to 
save himself. He had bowed to her imperious will, 
and he had died believing that the ring had been 
delivered to her and that she had broken her royal 
word. The storms of almost seventy years had 
already chilled and frozen her, but over her soul 
all this rushed like a torrent. She flew with the 
ferocity of a tigress upon the aged, dying woman, 
almost shaking the remaining life out of her before 
she recovered her self-control. " God may forgive 
you," she angrily exclaimed, " but I never will." 

She returned to the palace in an uncontrollable 
storm of grief. Any peace of mind she may ever 
have had was gone forever. Essex was dead. She 
would not eat. She could not sleep. For ten days 
and nights she lay where she had flung herself on 
the floor, propped up with pillows which her ladies 
brought her, vainly imploring her to rise and allow 
herself to be put to bed. She would not listen. 
She lay where she had fallen, and before her sleep- 
less eyes the memory of her old association with 
Essex passed in shadowy review. 



50 Royal Women 

Soon it became evident that the end was at hand. 
None knew it better than she. The shadows fell 
upon the evening of the last day. The Archbishop 
of Canterbury read the prayers for the dying. The 
Councillors came to ask about the succession. With 
that ambiguity with which she had been wont to 
baffle her inquisitors for forty-five years, she re- 
plied that she had held a regal sceptre, she desired 
a royal successor. When pressed further she said: 
"A king for my successor." As there was no king 
but James of Scotland, Mary Stuart's son, the 
crown passed quietly to him. 

Elizabeth died on the twenty-fourth of March, 
1603. She was sixty -nine years old, and had occu- 
pied the throne of England for almost half a 
century. In England's great Valhalla, West- 
minster Abbey, she sleeps in marble, untroubled 
by the fact that on one side of her lies her sister 
Mary, who persecuted her, on the other, Mary of 
Scotland, whom perhaps she persecuted. The 
tombs of these three royal women call to mind the 
words of Omar, the Persian : 

Think, in this batter 'd Caravanserai 
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, 
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp 
Abode his destin 'd Hour, and went his way. 




Death of Queen Elizabeth 




II 

CROWN AND THISTLE 

Mary Queen o£ Scots 




Mary Stuart in youth 



II 

CROWN AND THISTLE 

Mary Queen of Scots 

HISTORIANS have made of Mary Queen of 
Scots either a martyred saint or an incor- 
rigible sinner. In point of fact she was 
neither. Her beauty, her romance, her faults, her 
misfortunes, her short, eventful life, her years of 
captivity, and her tragic death have combined to 
make her one of the most picturesque and remark- 
able figures in all history. When her English 
cousin signed her death warrant, she did what she 
would have given her crown to prevent. She made 
Mary Stuart immortal. 

Her life was divided into two distinct epochs. 
The first included her childhood, her young woman- 
hood in France, and her return to Scotland — a 
period neglected by historians. The rest of her 
years made up the second epoch. The multitude 
of events which crowded into her later years have 
made us forget that nearly half her life was over 
before her stormy history in Scotland began. 
53 



54 Royal Women 

The raven croaked when Mary Stuart was born. 
She entered hfe with a prognostication of failure. 
Late in the afternoon of a wintry day in December, 
1542, a single horseman rode swiftly over the 
moorlands in the direction of Falkland Palace. It 
was the day after the battle of Solway Moss. Ten 
thousand Scots had been put to flight by three 
hundred Englishmen, and in one of the bare, 
unfurnished chambers in the tower of the palace, 
James Fifth of Scotland lay dying. 

The rider answered the challenge of the sentry 
at the gate and was permitted to enter. "On the 
king's business ! " he said to the guard at the door. 
A moment later he was admitted to the room where 
the dying man lay. The face of the king lighted 
up when he entered. 

*' You have news ^ " he asked eagerly. 

" Take heart, Milord. All is not yet lost. You- 
have a child." 

" A child, you say ? A son ? " 

" Nay, Milord ; 't is a daughter — a wee bit 
lassie." 

The sick man groaned. "And is it indeed so ? " 
he asked, sorrowfully. "Then God's will be done. 
The crown came to the Stuarts with a lass, and 
't will go with a lass." Then he turned his face to 
the wall and spoke no more, save to mutter in 



Mary Queen of Scots 5ry 

his delirium the words, " Sohvay Moss — Sohvay 
Moss." 

The history of Mary Stuart is largely a story of 
flight. Almost from the day of her birth to the 
day of her death she flitted from place to place, 
from palace to palace, from castle to castle, from 
prison to prison, driven hither and yon either by 
fear or by necessity, like chaff that is blown before 
the wind. The turbulent life of the little kingdom, 
torn both by foreign invasion and domestic war- 
fare, had ebbed and flowed for centuries before she 
was born, and had left its impress upon the charac- 
ter of the nation over which she had to reign. 

The ancient Scots were a rude and intrepid 
people. They were divided into clans governed 
by the head of the family, whom all the clan served 
with fidelity even unto death. All the members of 
the clan bore the same name, and between clan and 
clan there existed, for injuries inflicted or for mur- 
ders committed, all those hereditary feelings of 
vengeance, those deadly hatreds which form the 
chief characteristic of that early state of society 
where the family constituted the only bond of 
association. 

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, how- 
ever, some fugitive adventurous Saxons and Nor- 
mans ventured into the Lowlands of Scotland. It 



56 Boyal Women 

was more as colonists than as conquerors that they 
came, but from the time of their coming there 
existed in the small kingdom two peoples, two 
languages, two states of society, two forms of 
organization. The old Celtic races kept to the 
mountains. The Anglo-Saxons occupied the plains. 
The Highlanders spoke the Gaelic, the Lowlanders 
the English language. The former continued to 
live in clans. The latter lived under the institu- 
tions of feudalism. The Highlanders recognized 
no bond except that of the family relationship. 
The Lowlanders acknowledged all the political and 
terwtorial framework of a military society. War 
was, so to speak, of permanent existence in Scot- 
land. Quarrels between clan and clan, between 
Highlander and Lowlander, were of continual 
occurrence, and to these were added foreign wars 
of no little importance. When such a state of 
affairs exists uninterrupted for centuries, it cannot 
fail to have its effect upon the character of the 
people, and this was the great problem which 
confronted the Stuarts. 

When James First came to the throne he 
endeavored to bring the clannish nobility into 
some sort of system. After that the Stuarts labored 
incessantly to diminish their influence and to humble 
their pride. James First, like his descendant, Mary 
Queen of Scots, was a prisoner in England for 




u in 

o 

I— I o 
O s 



Mary Queen of Scots 57 

eighteen years. At the end of that time he was 
murdered in a Dominican monastery by a clansman. 
During the long minority of James Second all 
the changes which James First endeavored to make 
disappeared, but as soon as he came of age he 
recommenced the work. He was killed by the 
bursting of a cannon on the battle-field, which 
fate doubtless saved him from one similar to his 
father's. James Third was left a minor, but as 
soon as he was old enough he took up the work. 
He acted with neither energy nor discernment, 
however, and all he accomplished was to unite the 
nobility against himself, instead of dividing it. 
He died in battle, and James Fourth, either alarmed 
or admonished by his father's and forefathers' fate, 
did not follow in their footsteps. He made terms 
with the Scottish nobility and took advantage of 
the quiet ^vhich ensued to strengthen his kingdom. 
He married the daughter of Henry Seventh, who 
had just brought to a termination the violent civil 
wars between the houses of York and Lancaster in 
England, and who was the founder of the Tudor 
dynasty. But Henry Eighth promptly undid what 
good his father had accomplished in regard to 
Scotland, and forced the king of the latter country 
to form a new alliance with the king of France 
and to take up arms against England. For once 
the king and the nobility acted in concert. But 



58 Royal Women 

James Fourth fell at Flodden Field, and under the 
long minority of James Fifth, who was less than 
two years old, the affairs of Scotland fell into the 
utmost disorder. The latter is interesting chiefly 
because he was the father of Mary Stuart. He 
sowed his wild oats with ungrudging partiality, and 
his end was no less tragic than that of his prede- 
cessors. 

Occasionally some would-be authority on the 
subject declares that there is nothing in heredity, 
but we smile at his misguided enthusiasm and pass 
him by, realizing, as always, that it is the most 
powerful factor in the sum of human destiny. 
That the tendencies which ancestors transmit 
mould the character of their descendants is un- 
questionable. As the parents are, so the children 
are likely to be, to a greater or less extent. One 
has but to glance at the face of James Fifth to see 
where Mary Stuart got her beauty, her witchery, 
her charm, and alas ! her frailty. 

No doubt James Fifth would have improved 
things to ^ certain extent, however, had it not 
been for the religious disturbance then prevalent 
in England. He could not but realize the difficulties 
of his position if Scotland remained a Catholic 
country while England turned Protestant. Henry 
Eighth urged him to accept his plans, both political 
and religious, and offered him his oldest daughter 



Mary Queen of Scots 59 

in marriage. He made things so unpleasant that 
James was compelled to choose between the two 
alternatives, namely, the ruin of the Catholic 
Church and the long cherished desire of his family, 
the conquering of the feudal nobility. He rejected 
Henry's proposal, but in so doing he was forced to 
return to the ancient policy of his country, which 
was a protective alliance with the king of France. 
He married Magdalen, daughter of Francis First 
of France. She lived but a few months, and then 
he wed Mary of Lorraine. She was the sister of 
the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise, 
and became the mother of Mary Queen of Scots. 

Mary of Lorraine was one of those splendid 
women about whom history says little. The prob- 
lem which confronted her after the death of James 
Fifth was a difficult one. Two sons had been born 
to them, but both had died in infancy. She could 
not but realize that the odds were against her. The 
tiny daughter who was destined to the crown of 
Scotland was a menace to the crown of England 
from the day of her birth. She herself was a 
foreigner — a stranger in a strange land. 

Mary was born in the old palace of Linlithgow, 
on December 8, 1542. This, the first of the stop- 
ping points, as it were, in IMary's career, was 
unquestionably one of the most splendid palaces 
of its day. It is still magnificent, even in its ruin. 



60 Royal Women 

The great courtyard is tenanted now only by the 
birds of the air. The water no longer flows from 
the carved fountain in the center. The roofs of 
the chapel and the banquet hall have fallen in long 
since. The palace is full of hidden stairways, sub- 
terranean passages, shadowy hiding places similar 
to those of the terrible castle of Louis Eleventh at 
Loches, but the court of Scotland was at its gayest 
when Linlithgow was the royal residence. With 
the birth of Mary Stuart, however, its bright days 
seem to have become dimmed with a foreshadowing 
of coming sorrow. James Sixth, Mary's son, came 
here occasionally, but the glory of the palace had 
gone out like the flame of a tiny candle in a gusty 
casement. After the retreat from Stirling, the 
troops of General Hawley occupied it and built 
such huge fires on the hearths that there was a 
terrible conflagration. It was left a blackened 
ruin, but still stately, majestic, and royal even in 
its decay. Carved in the stone over the deep bay 
window in the room where Mary was born is the 
Crown and Thistle, commemorative of the event. 

The mind of Mary's mother was filled with fore- 
boding when she thought of the future of her child. 
True, there were staunch hearts in Scotland, hearts 
to whom this little babe was inexpressibly dear, 
who recognized that she was the sole representative 



Mary Queen of Scots 61 

of the ancient royal line. Mary of Lorraine feared 
that the effort would be made to separate her from 
her child, and she was not mistaken. Untold dan- 
gers beset her from nearly every quarter. No 
sooner was James Fifth dead than the Earl of 
Arran, next of kin, claimed the regency. He then 
determined to get possession of Mary, and how 
pertinaciously her mother struggled to retain con- 
trol of her child is a matter of history. Over in 
England was a still more powerful enemy, Henry 
Eighth. He, too, was watching the progress of 
affairs. He was not blind to the fact that the 
continuance of the royal line in storm-shaken Scot- 
land depended on the existence of a fragile babe. 
He began to lay plans. He would cheat Mary 
out of her inheritance if he could and get control of 
her country himself. He demanded her betrothal 
to his son, Prince Edward. This was granted. 
Then he demanded that the infant queen be placed 
in his hands for safe-keeping, but here he failed. 
He found the laws of Scotland, as well as the will 
of the people, too much for him on this occasion. 
Then he demanded that at the age of ten she 
should be sent to England, and that in the mean- 
time an English lady and gentleman should be 
placed with her, who should conduct her education 
after the English fashion. The queen mother was 



62 Royal Women 

filled with alarm. She had the greatest distrust of 
Henry. There was but one way to outwit him. 
She would send her child to her own people in 
France if she could not summon enough support to 
keep her with her in Scotland. 

Mary was only a few weeks old when she made 
her first flight. For the absolute safety of her 
person her mother fled with her to Stirling Castle 
and lodged her royal charge safely behind those 
impregnable w^alls. In the old square tower which 
looked out toward the Highlands the nursery was 
situated, and altogether unruffled by the fierce 
excitement which was agitating two kingdoms on 
her account, Mary grew and flourished in strength 
and beauty, and was in every respect a healthy, 
happy, normal child. From Stirling Castle, when 
she was eight months old, she was taken to the 
church of the Grey Friars to be crowned. On the 
ninth day of September, 1543, they took her from 
her cradle, enveloped her in royal robes, and car- 
ried her from the nursery to the old church where 
she was invested with all the glittering symbols of 
an inheritance which proved fatal. The crown 
was placed upon her brow, the scepter put in a 
tiny hand too small to hold it, the great sword of 
state girded around her. Every prelate and peer 
knelt before her, repeated the oath of allegiance, 
and kissed her little hand. No wonder she wept. 




be 



^■fl 



Mary Queen of Scots 63 

It is recorded that she never ceased to weep during 
the whole of the ceremony — an event which filled 
the minds of the people with superstitious fears 
and forebodings. 

The coronation of Mary exasperated Henry 
Eighth beyond measure. He ordered her seized 
and sent to England, but his envoys found it 
impossible either to corrupt or outwit the faithful 
lord keepers who had her safely in charge; and 
although Stirling Castle was considered capable of 
resisting any sort of attack the little girl was 
removed once more, this time to the Priory on the 
picturesque island of Inchmahome, in the Lake of 
Menteith in Perth, close to the north border of 
Stirlingshire. 

When one has a desire (as some one has fitly 
expressed it) to realize history, he should make a 
pilgrimage to this old Priory, or the ruins, which 
are now all that remain of it. It is about half an 
hour's ride from Stirling, and it is almost as 
secluded there today as it was four centuries ago. 
He may walk down the aisles where the abbots 
trod long since, and pause by the graves in the 
choir. For some reason the quiet dead seem always 
to rest more peacefully in such spots as this than 
in the mad rush of the world outside. The ruined 
refectory is roofless now and open to the air. My 
lady's chamber is tenantless forever. 



64 Royal Women 

Gone is the roof, and perched aloof 

Is an owl, like a Friar of Orders Grey. 
Perhaps 't is a priest, come back to feast — 

For priests do not always fast, they say. 
The doughty lords sleep the sleep of swords, 

Dead are the dames and damozels. 
The king in his crown has laid him down, 

And the jester with his bells. 

Over this little island Mary romped and clam- 
bered, clad in the national costume, passing almost 
the only happy days she ever knew in the land that 
gave her birth. When she left it the glory of the 
old Priory departed. Nothing disturbed its monot- 
ony again until the giant waves of the Reformation 
broke over Scotland. Since the ruin occasioned by 
that great religious convulsion, deep peace has 
wrapped its mantle around Inchmahome. Year 
after year the ivy has clambered farther and far- 
ther over the old domain, and nothing breaks the 
silence there now save the rustling grass beneath 
your feet. Few visit the island. Of the thousands 
who travel to Scotland year after year, doubtless 
many are unaware that on this little island they 
would see not only one of the most interesting but 
one of the loveliest spots on earth. 

When Mary was taken to Inchmahome she was 
accompanied by the four Maries, faithful little 
attendants, companions and friends of her child- 
hood. They went with her to France, returned with 



Mary Queen of Scots Q5 

her to Scotland, and forsook her never till her 
tragic death. The old rhyme* tells us that 

Yesterday there were four Maries ; 

Today there are but three. 
There was Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton 

And Mary Carmichael and me. 

Mary Beaton was the daughter of Sir John 
Beaton, the keeper of Falkland Palace, to which 
James Fifth fled after the battle of Solway Moss, 
and where he died. Some of the names most famed 
in Scottish song and story are connected with the 
four Maries. Mary Beaton married Alexander 
Ogilvie, who figured largely in the history of Mary 
Stuart's reign. Mary Fleming was the daughter 
of the queen's aunt, Lady Fleming. She married 
the famous Maitland of Lethington. Mary Living- 
ston was the daughter of Mary Stuart's guardian, 
and from her vigorous habits due to her youth and 
health she was called "Mary the lustie." She was 
married to John, the son of Robert, Lord Semple. 
The Semples were a family famed for their literary 
and artistic gifts. Among them were poets, artists, 
and musicians of merit. 

Mary Seaton alone of the four remained unmar- 

* There is something wrong about the well-known rhyme, 
however. The names of the four little girls were Mary Beaton, 
Mary Seaton, Mary Livingston, and Mary Fleming. The rhyme 
is supposed to have been composed by Mary Stuart, the word me 
referring to herself. 



66 Royal Women 

ried while Mary Stuart was in Scotland. She went 
with her when she fled into England, was in con- 
stant attendance on her until the end of her life, 
and walked by her royal mistress' side into the 
great stone hall at Fotheringay on the morning 
when the final tragedy was wrought. 

What a contrast between the fairy island of 
Inchmahome and the Gibraltar - like fortress on 
Dumbarton Rock whither Mary's next flight was 
taken. It is a huge cone-shaped rock divided into 
two parts and almost four hundred feet high. The 
top is reached by long flights of steps, and at high 
tide the place is almost an island. This great fort- 
ress was so old when Mary was there that the almost 
four hundred years which have passed since then 
are but as yesterday. The actual date of its founda- 
tion is not known. It was occupied by the Romans 
in 368. The Danes and Norwegians, the Romans 
and the Picts waged a thousand battles around 
and over it, changing it not at all. Dumbarton 
calls to memory the story of William Wallace. 
Here he was received by Menteith with all honor as 
a friend and then by the basest of treachery was 
handed over to Edward of England to meet his 
trial at Westminster and his cruel death at Smith- 
field. At the entrance of the steps is a portal known 
as the Wallace Gate, and over it two heads are 
crudely carved in the stone. The heads are those 



Mary Queen of Scots 67 

of Wallace and his betrayer. The latter has his 
finger in his mouth, that being the signal by which 
he betrayed his chief and his friend to torture and 
death. But as is the case in every instance, Time 
has made all things right. It is no more possible 
to destroy a man like Wilham Wallace than it 
was to destroy Him who hung upon the cross at 
Calvary. 

When she was at Dumbarton, Mary was as near 
as possible to France, to which country her mother 
had determined to send her if it seemed advisable. 
The necessity presented itself. She was six years 
old, and her education must be begun. Here she 
took leave of her devoted mother and sailed away, 
to exchange for a time the thistle of Scotland for 
tlie lily of France. Supposing that she would sail 
from Leith, Henry Eighth had his English galleys 
out intent upon her capture. But the vessel with 
Mary on board eluded the English ships that lay in 
wait for her. 

One cannot but speculate on what her future 
would have been had she been captured at this time 
by the English. Would her life have been less 
stormy, her death less tragic? Not so. Edward, the 
young son of Henry Eighth, to whom she would 
have been married, might perhaps have shown her 
courtesy and consideration while he lived, but after 
his early death nothing could have saved her from 



68 Royal Women 

the jealousy and fear of Mary Tudor. There 
would have been the same quarrel, for the same 
reason, between herself and Elizabeth. Her expe- 
rience in her English prison would only have been 
hastened, and would have ended on the scaffold just 
the same. Tower Hill would have anticipated 
Fotheringay. She would have missed her happy 
days in France. She would have lost her earthly 
immortality, and history would have been deprived 
of its most picturesque and romantic figure. 

The vessel with Mary on board landed at Ros- 
coff, a little port in Finistere, in Brittany, three 
hundred and fifty miles from Paris. It is a port 
unknown save to the fishermen along the coast, and 
to them it is known as a place from which to stay 
away — a rendezvous of smugglers and pirates. To 
this port also came Charles Edward Stuart, the 
young Pretender, whom the Scotch people affec- 
tionately called " Bonnie Prince Charlie," after his 
hapless venture in Scotland. 

When we recall the sorrows of Mary Stuart's 
life, it is pleasing to remember that it held one 
period of uninterrupted sunshine. From the day 
of her landing at Roscoff until the death of her 
young husband necessitated her return to Scotland, 
she knew not a care. The court of France was the 
most corrupt in Europe, but her life there was 
unaffected by it. She spent her early years in the 



Mary Queen of Scots 69 

convent over which her maternal grandmother, 
Antoinette de Bourbon, presided, and which was 
noted for its purity. At St. Germain her betrothal 
to her cousin took place — and how many faces 
afterward famed in history gathered at that cere- 
mony ! There were Henry Second and Catherine 
di Medicis, his queen, the Cardinal of Lorraine, 
the Duke of Guise, the little boys who later were 
to become Francis Second, Charles Ninth, and 
Henry Third, and that very ugly little fellow, 
Prince Henry of Navarre, afterward Henry 
Fourth, perhaps the greatest king France ever 
knew. 

On the twenty-fourth day of April, 1558, Mary 
was married to her cousin, Francis de Valois, eldest 
son of the king of France. The wedding took 
place in the great Cathedral of Notre Dame. All 
the nobility of the ancient regime surrounded the 
young bride on her wedding day. She was truly 
loved by all. Even Catherine di Medicis, the 
austere, who afterwards cherished a deadly enmity 
toward Mary Stuart, said, " She has turned all our 
heads — this little rose of Scotland — to say noth- 
ing of our hearts." Old Notre Dame has witnessed 
many ceremonies, christenings, weddings, corona- 
tions, services for the dead, and one cannot think 
of Mary Stuart's wedding day without being 
touched with the remembrance of that other serv- 



70 Royal Women 

ice — a service of sorrow and tears in memory of 
her after the tragedy at Fotheringay. 

Mary was now sixteen years old, and the occa- 
sion of her marriage to Francis was the beginning 
of her quarrel with Elizabeth of England. The 
king of France had assumed for her on that day, 
in her name, the Coat of Arms of England. Mary 
was not consulted. She was the victim of circum- 
stances. Elizabeth demanded an apology. Mary 
made it — for something which was not her fault. 
Elizabeth went further. She demanded the restora- 
tion of Calais, which had been taken from England 
by the Duke of Guise during her sister Mary's 
reign. The French commissioner was stung by her 
insolence into replying, "We are quite willing to 
restore Calais to the queen of England, whom we 
take to be Mary Stuart." Word was borne to the 
Court of Elizabeth that Mary had said that she 
hoped to be queen of England before long. Think 
not that the daughter of Henry Eighth forgot any 
of these things when Mary fell into her power. 

One day a great change came to the royal house 
of France. The whole court, in merry mood, was 
watching a tournament in the courtyard, when 
suddenly all were startled by a cry from Catherine 
di Medicis, the queen. A moment more and Mary 
Stuart was no longer the wife of the Dauphin. She 
was Queen of France and Navarre. Henry Second 




Ifl 




«. 



Mary Queen of Scots 71 

had been killed in mock combat in the courtyard, 
and then began that bitter enmity of Catherine di 
Medicis for Mary Stuart, an enmity which pursued 
her till the end of her life and yet was not powerful 
enough to record one word of slander against her 
while she lived in France. One may rest assured 
that Mary's life in France was blameless. The evil 
eyes of that licentious court would have laid bare 
her secrets had her life held any. Read the history 
of France during the reign of Henry Second and 
you will understand why John Knox and the 
Scottish Reformers objected to that country as a 
home for their little queen. 

In the minds of the French people it is the illicit 
loves of their kings that linger longest. If you 
visit those royal abodes today and ask about Mary 
Stuart, you will find that they know nothing fur- 
ther about her than that she was for a short time 
the wife of the young king, Francis Second. But 
they will talk for hours about th-e beautiful Diana 
of Poitiers, the favorite of Henry Second, who wore 
her colors when he rode to his death, or of Gabrielle 
d'Estrees, who at a word from Henry Fourth for- 
sook her lover on the eve of their marriage and 
followed the king, and who died a dreadful death 
from poison; of lovely Louise de la Fayette, 
for whom Louis Thirteenth would have sacrificed 
his kingdom; of Louise de la Valliere, the gentle, 



72 Royal Women 

the charming, the adored of Louis Fourteenth, for 
a time ; of Madame de Montespan and Madame de 
Maintenon who supplanted her in the wavering 
affections of Le Grand Monarque; of the various 
and numerous favorites of Louis Fifteenth, espe- 
cially the notorious Comtesse du Barri. Mary's 
life of innocence has left no trace, but the memory 
of these beautiful sinners is as abiding as though 
carved in stone. 

After Mary's marriage only two short years 
went by. Francis, the young king, grew frailer 
and frailer. So fearful was he of his terrible 
mother that he dared not interfere with her plans. 
One day she called her court about her and com- 
pelled them to witness the slaughter of the Hugue- 
nots. The young king and queen were terrified. 
Mary fainted, but when she was restored was 
placed again in her chair by Catherine's orders. 
Francis rose to take her away. " Sit down, my 
son," said his mother; "I command you to re- 
main. Teach your wife the duty of a sovereign." 

For once the young king asserted himself. " You 
will pardon me, Madame," he answered. " Govern 
my kingdom and slay my subjects if you will. I 
am powerless to prevent you. But I myself will 
judge of what is seemly for my wife." 

Mary was led away, but the strain had been too 



Mary Queen of Scots 73 

much for Francis. Rapidly he pined and died. 
No physician could be found who could cure a 
nameless malady. Catherine exulted that she was 
once more mistress of France. Mary knew that 
her days in that fair land were numbered. At the 
time of her marriage to Francis she had been 
created Duchess of Tourraine. She begged to be 
allowed to retain this title and remain in France. 
But her uncles of Lorraine and Guise were ambi- 
tious. They had watched over her childhood in 
France, had stood in the position of parents to her. 
They insisted that she return to her native land 
and assume the crown and the royal obligations 
which were hers by inheritance. 

Mary dreaded the bleak and barren hills of Scot- 
land as a living tomb. She dreaded the return to a 
people to whom she had become a stranger, whose 
religious faith she could not share. But there 
seemed no escape. So, sad and disconsolate, a 
widow at eighteen, she sailed from Calais. She 
stood on the deck and saw through a mist of tears 
the fast - receding coast of France. As Henry 
Eighth had tried to capture her when she sailed 
to France eleven years before, so Elizabeth made 
the same attempt on her return; but the fog 
wrapped closely around and protected her all the 
way. 



74 Royal Women 

Nothing could have been more depressing than 
Mary's entrance into Scotland. Her horses were 
captured by the English. She and her ladies were 
compelled to mount such sorry-looking nags as 
could be obtained. The way to Edinburgh lay 
deep in mud. Her French attendants laughed at 
the wretchedness of the scene. The rain poured 
down. "The city was hidden from my sight," 
said Mary. "Even the rocks wept bitter tears on 
my return." 

She spent her first night at Holyrood. The 
interior was dreary and cheerless. Carpets were 
unknown. The damp stone corridors and gloomy 
chambers were strewn with rushes. Her elegant 
attendants, fresh from the splendors of the court 
of the Valois, showed their wonder and dismay 
on their faces. The good people of Edinburgh 
assembled to do her honor, and played upon their 
bagpipes the whole night long, making sleep 
impossible. During the long hours of that night 
Mary realized as never before the difficulties to 
which she had returned. Perhaps through the 
darkness she saw the gloomy figures of Murray, 
Morton, and Ruthven, and heard at the door the 
voice of her relentless enemy, John Knox. The 
first chapter in her life was ended. She had turned 
over the page — and how different is the story 
written on the other side ! 




Holvrood Castle 




Apartment of Mary at Holyrood 



Mary Queen of Scots 75 



THE SECOND EPOCH 



When Mary returned to Scotland her staunchest 
ally, her devoted mother, was dead. Gone, indeed, 
were all those who had guided her youth. Around 
the maturity of Elizabeth of England clustered all 
those men who made for England her Golden Age. 
Around the youth of Mary of Scotland the en- 
lightened men were few and far between. 

Edinburgh was not then the splendid city it is 
now. Like so many of the old towns, once quaint 
and picturesque and stately, it has become modern. 
But the old town, where once it clustered between 
Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood, was certainly one 
of the most picturesque spots on earth. The rock 
on which Edinburgh Castle stands was occupied as 
a stronghold by the Picts many centuries before 
our era. Its story is in a large measure the history 
of Scotland. The new town of Edinburgh is quite 
a modern city, but the old town is dark even on 
bright days. In wet weather it fairly weeps. Per- 
haps its tears are of remorse and sorrow. Scarce 
a threshold there but has been stained with murder. 
The pavement might yet be slippery with blood all 
the way from Edinburgh Castle down to Holyrood. 

But Mary brought her French civilization back 
to Scotland with her. It was not long till Holy- 
rood was transformed. Turkish rugs and silken 



76 Royal Women 

curtains took the place of withered rushes and 
barren windows. All the splendid things she had 
collected while Dauphiness of France were brought 
hither. She had her harp and her pictures, her 
embroidery and her books, beautiful books printed 
on illuminated vellum and richly bound, books in 
Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, books of poetry 
and romance, history and chronicles, books of 
science and art — all bearing witness to her educa- 
tion and her accomplishments. Of all these treas- 
ures there is now no trace at Holyrood. All have 
vanished. They are scattered, ruined, destroyed. 
There is nothing sadder in all the world than the 
ancient royal residences. Here at Holyrood the 
shadows of the past lie thick about one, and he sees 
in fancy the fair figures of the beautiful court 
flitting to and fro. The apartments are musty 
and dingy and dark with age. They ill accord 
now with our idea of magnificence. The arras is 
faded and moth-eaten, the hanging of the beds in 
tatters. The pictures look down from their black- 
ened frames and regard you in ghostly fashion. As 
one wanders over these memory-haunted spots, he 
feels as the poet has expressed it: 

like one who treads alone 

Some banquet hall deserted, 

Whose lights are fled and garlands dead, 

And all but hun departed. 



Wlary Queen of Scots 77 

We are telling the story of Mary Stuart's pri- 
vate life, not that of the Reformation, the general 
history of Scotland, its battles, uprisings, insur- 
rections. One or two things, however, must be 
kept in mind. The fact that Mary was so essen- 
tially French was a great thorn in the Scotch flesh. 
She was different from themselves, and she could 
not make herself otherwise any more than the 
leopard can change its spots. The tragedy of her 
life was due to two things. The first seems trivial 
enough, but it will sometimes extend to unmeasur- 
able lengths. It was jealousy — the personal 
jealousy of the vain, coquettish, admiration-loving, 
unmarried queen of England, who was no longer in 
her youth, for the lovable, affectionate, sweet- 
natured, still-youthful queen of Scotland, who was 
the mother of a son. The other cause was the 
great religious upheaval — the Reformation. The 
tempest gathered and broke over Mary Stuart's 
head, and was the greatest struggle in her troubled 
career. The two elements at war could no more 
mix than can oil and water, and the right and wrong 
of the matter is a question every man will settle for 
himself. In order to understand things rightly, 
we should have to go back through the four cen- 
turies to the conditions as they then existed, and 
that is impossible. All we can do now is to accept 
the verdict which history has written. The battle, was. 



78 Royal Women 

to the strong. To the victor belonged the spoils. 
Like everyone else who has a faith, Mary clung 
to hers. She was French, therefore Catholic. 
Nothing could change her. 

Volumes have been written about the love affairs 
of Mary Stuart. She had but one. Her youthful 
marriage to Francis Second was a love affair in 
every sense of the word. The rest were royal 
episodes. 

Shortly after her return to Scotland there had 
come from France in the suite of the Marshal D'Am- 
ville a romantic, impressionable young man with a 
love for music and poetry in his soul. He formed 
a passionate attachment for the queen and followed 
wherever she went. Mary smiled upon him, as 
was her custom with everyone, not supposing that 
his admiration was different from that of her other 
followers. On one occasion he presented her with 
a volume of his poems and she gave him a hand- 
some horse in return. Misinterpreting her gracious- 
ness, he fell madly in love with her, lost all pru- 
dence and self-control, in fact went almost mad. 
One night the queen's ladies discovered him, armed 
with dagger and sword, under her bed. Mary 
pitied him and would not allow him to be punished 
until he had committed a second similar offense. 
This time the news of his wild folly reached the 
ears of the council and provoked the members of 



Mary Queen of Scots 79 

that body to such a degree that he was beheaded in 
the market-place at St. Andrews. This young man 
was Pierre de Chastelard, and the episode of his 
unfortunate love for Mary has been the theme of 
many an artist and poet. 

The Queen of Scots realized that there was no 
way in which she could so strengthen her own posi- 
tion and win a point over her English cousin and 
adversary as to marry again. If she could establish 
the succession in Scotland, all would be well. Many 
were the suitors who presented themselves. Eliza- 
beth would have liked to select Mary's husband for 
her. She even offered her her own prime favorite, 
Lord Leicester, but Mary refused him with scorn. 
At last she married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord 
Darnley, a union which, like everything else con- 
nected with her life from this time on, proved 
disastrous. Darnley was a mere youth. He was 
the next lineal heir, after Mary herself, to the 
crown of England. He was wild and foolish and 
vain and stubborn, a past master in the art of 
making trouble wherever he went. From the day 
of the wedding the unbroken succession of sorrow 
and suffering which were to end in nineteen years 
of imprisonment and death began. But the mar- 
riage to Darnley was a blow to Elizabeth. Mary 
could now defy her, and her position as claimant to 
the English throne was greatly strengthened. 



80 Royal Women 

What a change came over Mary's life and charac- 
ter after this ill-fated marriage! She was now a 
beautiful, accomplished woman of twenty-two, and 
was rapidly acquiring a knowledge of the world 
unrivaled by any woman of her time. Darnley 
demanded to reign jointly with her, but she had 
learned already that he was not to be trusted. 
Those in power about her saw in Damley's weak- 
ness a chance to get things into their own hands, 
and an episode trivial in itself gave them the 
opportunity. 

One day not long after she had returned to her 
own country, Mary had a mass said in the chapel 
at Holyrood for her young husband, Francis of 
Valois. During the service she heard, ringing clear 
and powerful, an exquisite, matchless voice. She 
inquired who the singer was and learned that he 
was an Italian named David Rizzio, who had come 
from Italy with the Ambassador from Piedmont. 
Mary was passionately fond of music, and Rizzio 
was admitted to her presence. On acquaintance 
she found him to be a man of education. He could 
both read and write, which few of the Scottish 
nobles could do. She engaged him to be her secre- 
tary, and consequently he spent much time in her 
presence. The popular belief that Rizzio was 
young and handsome and that Mary was deeply 
in. love, with him is one of the unfounded fictions of 



Mary Queen of Scots 81 

history. He was nearly fifty years old, slightly 
lame, and not at all good-looking. His sole quali- 
ties lay in his fine voice and his ability as a secretary. 
It was easy enough, hoAvever, for the conspira- 
tors to convince the weak-minded Darnley that his 
honor was at stake, and although he knew that 
Mary was soon to become a mother and that the 
hope of the succession lay in the safe birth of her 
child, Darnley himself, accompanied by the blood- 
thirsty Scotchmen, entered Holyrood one night, 
stealthily, by way of the aisles of the Abbey 
Church, and came into the queen's apartments, 
where she was at supper with her ladies and Rizzio. 
Darnley entered first, alone. Like Judas of old, he 
went to his wife and kissed her. Glancing over his 
shoulder she saw his followers and became suspi- 
cious. She demanded the reason for their presence. 
They wished to speak to her secretary. Alanned, 
she asked Darnley if he knew their purpose. He 
lied. He said he did not. But Rizzio knew. Like 
a frightened animal, he threw himself at the queen's 
feet and clung to her skirts. "Fear not," said 
Mary. "My husband will never allow harm to 
come to you in my presence." They rushed at 
him, overturning the table, and as he was behind the 
queen, in order to accomplish their work, they 
pierced him with their daggers over her shoulder, 
while Darnley held her hands. When life was 



82 Royal Women 

extinct they dragged him out into the hall, stabbed 
him with their daggers more than fifty times, and 
then flung the bleeding body down in the doorway. 
Mary had fainted, but when she recovered and 
learned that Rizzio was dead, she exclaimed, " Fare- 
well to tears. Think we now only on vengeance!" 
Of love for Darnley there had been little enough in 
Mary's heart, and now that she was convinced of his 
complicity in this most atrocious deed, she was filled 
with loathing of him. A few months later, in the 
Castle of Edinburgh, Mary gave birth to her son, 
James Sixth of Scotland, who afterward became 
James First of England — a man who was craven 
and a coward, whose kingly word even was not to 
be trusted. Who shall question the power of 
heredity when he remembers the character of 
James First .^^ Who, remembering the condition of 
the queen when Rizzio was murdered in her pres- 
ence, and meditating upon the probable influence 
such a tragedy would have, not only on herself 
but on her unborn child — remembering also that 
cowardice and deceit and stubbornness full of mis- 
chief came into the Stuart family with this very 
child — shall say that the effect was not due to the 
cause? It is a strange fact, also, that for some 
unaccountable reason there springs often from just 
such vices of character as these a sensitiveness of 
feeling which responds feverishly to art and beauty 



Mary Queen of Scots 83 

in its every form and manifestation. Nothing ever 
has, nothing ever will obliterate the picturesque- 
ness of the Stuarts. How artistic and beautiful 
they were — James First, James Second, Charles 
First, Charles Second, Arabella Stuart, and Queen 
Anne ! And yet, might not one, if he tried, see the 
shadow of Rizzio behind the handsome figure of 
Charles First when he stood on the scaffold at 
Whitehall.? 

As the days went by, the thought of how she 
could best be revenged engrossed Mary's mind. 
Darnley went to Glasgow, and while there con- 
tracted the smallpox. Mary arranged that he 
should occupy an unused house near the castle, 
called Kirk-o'-Field, afterward the site of Edin- 
burgh University; and here we must turn aside 
from the story of Darnley for a moment to speak 
of the man who wrote by far the saddest chapter in 
Mary's tempestuous life, James Hepburn, Earl of 
Bothwell. 

Mary wrote a letter to Maitland of Lethington, 
perhaps the most influential man in her Council, 
telling him that she was determined to punish the 
murderers of Rizzio. He showed the letter to 
Bothwell, who was a nobleman from the Border 
and a ruffian noted for his villainies even there. He 
owned a castle — a fitting place for such as he — 
called the Hermitage, and to its gloomy fastnesses 



84 Royal Women 

he used to fly when he was pursued. In its dungeons 
many a hapless captive languished and died. Both- 
well, when he learned of Mary's intention, took the 
law into his own hand. It will always be a ques- 
tion — an unanswerable question — whether Mary's 
determination to punish Rizzio's murderers in- 
cluded the assassination of her husband or not. 
That Both well saw the opportunity to be rid of 
him is undeniable. So one night he kept watch 
till after Mary had paid Darnley a visit and had 
returned to the castle, to be present at the wedding 
of one of her maids. Suddenly the air was rent 
by a terrific explosion. Kirk - o' - Field was de- 
stroyed, and in an adjoining field, in their night 
clothes, with no marks whatever of violence upon 
their bodies, Darnley and his valet were found 
dead. Both well had blown up the house with gun- 
powder, and the fact that the bodies were in no 
way mutilated gave rise to the suspicion that 
Darnley was first strangled to death. His fate 
secured for him a certain degree of compassion, 
but there was no redeeming feature in his character. 
Although Mary had suffered much at his hands, 
she shut herself up in the castle after his death, 
apparently worn out by anxiety, some say remorse. 
She went through the form of punishing those con- 
cerned. Bothwell was acquitted, and to celebrate 
the fact he gave a banquet. When his followers 



Manj Queen of Scots 85 

were under the influence of drink he compelled 
them to sign a paper, drawn up in favor of him- 
self, in which they declared their belief in his 
innocence, their conviction that the queen should 
remarry, and that the most desirable husband to be 
found was himself. One more desperate measure 
was necessary to crown an act which has no parallel 
even in Scotland. Triumphant on every hand, 
master of the realm in deed if not in name, feared 
by those who did not hate him, untrammeled by 
any sense of honor, uninfluenced by pity, and 
unaff^ected by shame, Bothwell did not hesitate to 
take the final step. He knew the woman with whom 
he had to deal, and that to off^er his suit would be 
only to be rejected with scorn. So he cast aside all 
remnants of caution and decency and set himself to 
compromise Mary so hopelessly that she would be 
compelled to marry him. 

With a force of a thousand men, he set out, 
ostensibly to quell a riot on the Border. Instead, 
he lay in wait for Mary and her little party as 
they were returning from Stirling. He seized her 
horse's bridle and hurried her off* to Dunbar Castle. 
No resistance was possible. For ten days he kept 
her prisoner there, refusing to allow her to see 
even her own servants. At the end of that time, 
broken in spirit and overcome with shame and 
melancholy, he took her, closely guarded, to Edin- 



86 Royal Women 

burgh. As the^^ approached the town she turned 
her horse's head toward Holyrood, but Bothwell 
seized the bridle and led the horse up High Street 
to Edinburgh Castle. Already he had had the 
banns published twice before he allowed her to 
return, and a few days later, weeping as though 
her heart would break, Mary was married to Both- 
well in the Council Chamber at Holyrood. Of all 
the acts of her career, this has been most bitterly 
denounced, but for some reason all have seemed to 
forget that she was helpless. She was hopelessly 
compromised already, so far as she herself was 
concerned. There was nothing left for Mary to 
do but to marry Bothwell. It was her only hope 
of saving either her life or her kingdom ; but even 
in a country inured to shocks the action caused 
horror. The people rose against her, and Bothwell, 
coward that he was, fled, leaving Mary to face the 
storm. She had to endure the gibes and insults of 
the soldiers and the populace. The people who 
had idolized her now^ clamored for her life. Escape 
was necessary, and the few followers she had 
resolved upon the chance of smuggling her out of 
the city. Secretly they conveyed her to the old 
Castle of Loch Leven, where her condition was 
about as unhappy as it could well be. She was 
given her choice between a trial, a divorce from 
Bothwell, or abdication. She yielded to the inevi- 



Mary Queen of Scots 87 

table. She was afraid of Bothwell. From a trial 
she knew she could not get justice, so she was forced 
to abdicate the crown and to appoint as regent her 
half-brother, Murray, a man whom she despised, 
and with reason. His mother, who was in a way 
Mary's jailor at Loch Leven, had been a favorite 
of James Fifth, Mary's own father, and Murray 
was the son of that illicit love. Now she was forced 
to appoint him guardian for her own little son. 

To this period of Mary's life belongs the story 
of the Casket Letters. After the death of Darnley 
a little casket was unearthed from among Mary's 
possessions, and it was said to have been given to 
her by Bothwell. It was filled with love letters 
which she was supposed to have written him before 
the murder of Darnley. It is now generally con- 
ceded that the casket letters were forged, but, 
whether genuine or not, they played a great part 
in Mary's life. The chief thing in favor of their 
genuineness was that they were written in beautiful 
French; but there is nothing to prove that Mary 
knew much of Bothwell until after Darnley 's death, 
and her evident fear and horror of him after this 
sad experience will scarcely allow the impartial to 
believe, in the first place, that she wrote the letters 
at all; in the second, that if she did write them 
they would be in her possession instead of his. It 
is well known, however, that it was on account of 



88 Royal Women 

these letters that Mary would not stand trial. She 
knew that they would be produced in evidence, and 
genuine or forged, would work to her disadvantage. 
Soon after this Bothwell passed out of Mary's life. 
His career was crowned by madness and death in 
foreign captivity, and his marriage to Mary was 
dissolved by the Pope at her request. 

Mary made friends with the young son of the 
keeper and through him escaped from Loch Leven. 
One night while the family was at dinner he laid 
his napkin softly on the keys and picked them up. 
Then he let Mary out and locked the family in. He 
assisted her into a boat and rowed her across the 
lake. Once she was free, she determined to strike 
one more blow for the throne she had been forced 
to renounce. There were still many to be found 
who upheld the Catholic faith and the Stuart cause. 
Six thousand men rallied to her standard, but 
Murray was too powerful. From the towers of 
Cathcart Castle, Mary saw her army routed. Once 
more she fled, trying to reach Dumbarton, but her 
lords implored her to leave the country. So she 
altered her course, and riding hard, reached Dun- 
drennan Abbey, almost on the shore of the Solway, 
where she spent her last night on the soil of Scot- 
land. The next day she crossed the Solway Firth 
in a fishing-vessel and landed at Cumberland, put- 



Mary Queen of Scots 89 

ting herself into the reahn of that other monarch 
in whose power it was to destroy her. 

A hunted fugitive, saddened and overwhelmed by 
her misfortunes, Mary wrote her English cousin 
asking for mercy and protection. Elizabeth 
wavered, but only for a moment. Guided by the 
advice of her councilors, who saw in the fugitive 
queen, now actually in England, a greater menace 
than when she was in Scotland, she directed that 
Mary be treated with respect but kept in safe 
custody. Mary begged a personal interview. 
Elizabeth declined to grant it, giving as a ridicu- 
lous reason that Mary was still under suspicion of 
having had a hand in the murder of Darnley. So 
Mary became a prisoner, and was to remain so the 
rest of her life. 

The years went b3^ Mary was removed first to 
Tutbury, thence to Wingfield, thence to Chatsworth, 
thence to Sheffield. In every case she was poorly 
cared for. The apartments were cold and bleak 
and damp, and her health began to give way. She 
grew desperate. The English queen watched in- 
cessantly for some opportunity to entangle her in 
something for which she could be lawfully tried 
and punished, and at last the chance was hers. 
Mary was implicated in the plot of Anthony 
Babbington to kill Elizabeth — an implication 



90 Royal Women 

proved beyond all doubt by the seizure of the 
correspondence. Mary was worn out with the long 
struggle, and, whereas formerly she would have 
gone to any length to keep the peace with Eliza- 
beth, now she would have killed her if she could. 
While the enormity of the crime of murder is 
always the same, under all the circumstances Mary 
should not be judged too harshly. She was clutch- 
ing at a straw. Every one of us will do desperate 
things when we are worn to the bone with suffering 
and are finally pushed to the wall. Mary had 
afforded enough evidence against herself now to 
be punished. She was arrested and her prison was 
changed once more, to the Castle of Fotheringay, 
in Northamptonshire. For eighteen years she had 
gone from prison to prison, but when the gray 
walls of Fotheringay were before her she knew it 
would be the last stopping-place on her journey. 

The years of confinement had told upon the 
Queen of Scots. The tall, proud carriage was bent 
and worn. The sweet face bore signs of ceaseless 
suffering. The brown hair was turning gray. But 
truly her pride and her spirit defied the ravages of 
time. Unconquered she was when she threw her- 
self upon Elizabeth's mercy. Two decades had not 
crushed her. She still looked into the dark future 
with a stout heart. During all the years of her 
captivity she had met insult with insult, pride with 



Manj Queen of Scots 91 

greater pride. If she wished a thing she demanded 
it as a right, not as a concession. She had fought 
a long, hard fight. She was vanquished. None 
knew it better than she, yet she scorned to beg 
for Hfe. 

The commissioners were appointed to try her. 
She dechned to be tried, saying that as she was not 
an English woman she could iiot be lawfully tried 
in England. Finally, however, she agreed to go to 
the Council Hall. She was formally charged with 
conspiracy to kill Elizabeth. Sentence of death 
was passed upon her. Parliament approved. All 
that was necessary now was the signature of the 
queen. Mary heard all this undismayed, and 
thanked God that her long captivity was about 
to end. 

Several weeks went by. Elizabeth was shuffling 
with the death warrant. Shut up in her castle, 
Mary had heard absolutely no news from outside 
since the trial. A dreadful silence seemed to haunt 
the place. The seeming lull, telling neither of life 
nor death, was worse than the certainty of death 
itself. Countenances were either awe-struck or 
heedless. Her jailor knew not whether to treat 
her as a queen or a criminal. 

Finally there came a day in November when she 
was told that Elizabeth had given orders to her 
jailors to treat her as one dead, showing her no 



92 Royal Women 

honors or consideration. She repHed that she was 
a queen by birth, and that no amount of ill treat- 
ment could alter that fact. The keeper tore down 
the Coat-of-Arms of Scotland which hung above 
her bed. She promptly hung her crucifix up in its 
place. Weeks and weeks followed, weeks of un- 
broken silence, no tidings, either good or bad, from 
outside. Mary knew not what to think of a silence 
so profound, and feared that they meant to do 
away with her by means of dagger or poison. She 
wrote to Elizabeth expressing this fear, asking that 
she might be executed in public and that her body 
might be sent back to France to lie in consecrated 
ground. This letter, written one might say on 
the very steps of the scaffold, is stamped with a 
supreme sadness and is full of dignity. Elizabeth 
did not answer that letter. She could not. Things 
were approaching a crisis. An unspeakable uneasi- 
ness was in the air. The public mind was inflamed. 
The people were weighed down with secret terror. 
There was no longer any doubt that Mary was to 
be put to death. 

At last the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury sent 
word one day that they wished to see her. Mary 
replied that, not feeling well, she had not risen that 
day, but that if the matter did not admit of delay 
she would get up at once. On receiving their 
answer, she rose, was dressed by her ladies, and 



Mary Queen of Scots 93 

sent word that she was waiting. The Earl of 
Shrewsbury informed her that the warrant had 
been signed and that the sentence was about to be 
carried out. Mary's sole reply was to make the 
sign of the Cross. When they had departed she 
began to settle the order of her last day. She 
made her will, wrote a letter to her uncle, the Duke 
of Guise, paid her servants, and gave them letters 
of discharge. When these things were accom- 
plished she said there was nothing more for her 
to do. Supper was served. She ate little, as was 
her custom. Watching and anxiety had wearied 
her, and fearing that her strength might forsake 
her, she went to bed. She fell asleep, and those 
who watched beside her gave evidence that her last 
night on earth was peaceful, untroubled by fear or 
dreams. 

In the morning she rose early, and when the 
summons came she was ready. Her physician threw 
himself at her feet and said, " Madame, Your 
Majesty is aware of our affection, also that it 
wrings our hearts to hand you over to your enemies. 
We will gladly follow you, but ask us not to lead 
you forth to death ! " 

" You are right," she answered, " and faithful. 
I myself will go first." 

Although the beauty of her youth had passed 
away during those nineteen years of captivity, 



94! Royal Women 

although the torture of the slowly revolving months 
had crippled her body, when that white-veiled 
figure passed into the great hall at Fotheringay 
all were impressed with the majesty of her presence. 
She had been but twenty-six years old when she 
had sought refuge and found a prison in England. 
Now she was forty-five — in the very prime of life. 
When her uncle, the Duke of Guise, heard of her 
sentence, he exclaimed, " She will know how to 
die!" That prophecy was fulfilled. During her 
last hours she spoke frequently of her youth in 
France, seemingly forgetting the wretchedness 
which followed. She prayed for her son, whom she 
had been made to believe had forsaken her, and for 
Scotland always ! 

It was a cold, damp, dark, gloomy morning in 
February. The great, shadowy apartment was 
made more somber by the black with which the 
walls and the scaffold were draped. The only 
gleam of color came from the blood-red suit of 
the executioner, who stood sullenly by the block, 
ax in hand. No sound was heard save the footsteps 
of the grim procession as it passed over the stone 
floor. At the foot of the stairs Mary's attendants 
were ordered back to their apartment. She asked 
why they might not accompany her, and was told 
it was feared they might lose their self-control and 
weep. "I will promise for them," she answered, 



Mary Queen of Scots 95 

and they were allowed to remain. With as little 
ceremony as though she had been the most hardened 
criminal, she was disrobed in the presence of all 
those men, standing before them in short skirt and 
sleeveless bodice. According to the ancient custom, 
the executioner asked forgiveness for what he was 
about to do. Mary began to say in Latin the 
prayers of her church, with which she w^as so 
familiar, and even those who thought her guilty 
could not keep back the tears. Her eyes were 
bandaged. She laid her head upon the block. The 
executioner seemed to hesitate a moment, and during 
the pause Mary said, in a voice which penetrated 
to the farthest corner of the dark hall, " Into Thy 
hands, O Christ. Into Thy hands!" The first 
stroke of the ax did not kill her, and the execu- 
tioner, furious at such a mishap, drove the second 
into the block so deeply that the ax could not be 
extricated. The Earl of Shrewsbury lifted the 
severed head and in half-hearted fashion cried, 
"Long live Queen Elizabeth! So perish all her 
enemies. Amen." 

With all Mary's faults, the people never ceased 
to love her. It is a well-known fact that she was 
executed within the walls because of the fear of an 
uprising. Fotheringay was to witness one more 
scene connected with its illustrious prisoner. Six 
months later, in the darkness of the night, its draw- 



96 Royal Women 

bridge was lowered and portcullis raised to permit 
the passing of a funeral train — the last historic 
function which was to occur within its walls. By 
the flickering light of torches, dimly illuminating 
the grim old stronghold, followed by those who had 
remained faithful, and by the poor, into whose life 
she had entered as a benediction, all that was mortal 
of Mary Queen of Scots passed outward from the 
dream-haunted prison to the restful peace of the 
cathedral at Peterborough. James Sixth, with all 
his despicable characteristics, demanded of Eliza- 
beth a fitting resting-place for his mother, and 
when he was king himself he had Fotheringay torn 
down, and Mary's body was removed from the 
cathedral to Westminster Abbey, where it of rights 
belonged. 

Four centuries have not sufficed to set at rest the 
fierce and seemingly interminable controversy over 
the character and reign of Mary Stuart, and one is 
quite safe in assuming that four centuries from now 
it will be no nearer a solution than at present. So 
long as there is a Scotchman, a Frenchman, an 
Englishman, a Catholic, and a Protestant on earth, 
each w ill settle the question for himself. 

There is no more fascinating pursuit than a visit 
to Scotland for the purpose of following up the 
story of the Queen of Scots steps by step. Over 
the paths she trod, and through those royal apart- 



Mary Queen of Scots 97 

ments, now dingy with age, where from time to time 
she dwelt, the lover of her romantic history will 
walk with reverence. Yet not even in this manner 
may her story best be learned. He who delights in 
History as expressed in Art will find it written more 
plainly in her portraits — in the change which 
came over her countenance as the years went by. 

There is a legend that one of the ancients, gazing 
for the first time upon the golden Helen of Troy, 
cried out : 

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burned the topless towers of Ilium'? 

So in studying the story of Mary Stuart we may 
easily ask ourselves this same question. Was this 
the face.'* 

Her hair was the reddish-brown characteristic of 
the Stuarts. Her eyebrows were arched and deli- 
cately pencilled. Her eyes were long and narrow 
and somewhat far apart. In youth her face wore 
an expression of open-hearted candor, but it 
changed to a somewhat sly and crafty look in her 
later years. As a child she had perfect health. 
Her color was fresh. She was hardy as a moun- 
taineer. During her life in France all her por- 
traits show the frank, open countenance, but after 
the death of her young husband her complexion 
changed to one of dazzling pallor, heightened 



98 Royal Women 

perhaps by the costume of white mourning she 
wore. They called her the little white widow. 
It was not until after her marriage with Damley 
that the change in her countenance began. The 
look of candor disappeared. She was becoming a 
diplomat. 

It is the unanimous verdict of both friend and 
enemy that Mary was beautiful, that she had great 
personal charm, attractiveness little short of witch- 
ery. But she was a creature of infinitely changeful 
moods, flashing readily from laughter to tears. 
Her beauty was of that elusive sort which often 
baffles not only the painter but the photographer. 
Something seemed to stand between the artist and 
her beauty. Only one or two have caught a fleeting 
glimpse of that intangible something which not 
infrequently makes even the plainest countenance 
radiant. 

If we compare the portraits of the Queen of 
Scots which were made before her imprisonment 
with those made after it began we shall find our- 
selves asking the old question — was this the face ? 
Was this the face which caused the relentless John 
Knox to say, " Our young queen is most pleasing 
— were it not for her heresy " ? Was this the 
face which made her foe, Elizabeth of England, 
exclaim gloomily, " There is something divine about 
my cousin Stuart's face " ? Was this the face which 



Mary Queen of Scots 99 

caused the people of Edinburgh to call out as she 
rode through the street : " Heaven's blessing on 
that sweet face " ? Was this the face the memory 
of which wrung the cry from Chastelard as he 
stood on the scaffold at St. Andrews, " I am dying 
for thee, thou cruel, but, ah ! the fairest queen on 
earth"? 

It is in the portraits painted during her cap- 
tivity that the change of countenance is more 
noticeable. Of these there are four. One is a 
canvas owned by the Earl of Levin and Melville. 
In this the face has taken on an expression of 
melancholy. There is a fascination about it, a 
charm which is irresistible. It is an altogether 
human face — the face of a queen who looked her 
part. Another was made during her confine- 
ment at Sheffield, and is known as the Sheffield 
portrait. It is now in the possession of the Duke 
of Devonshire. The third is the celebrated por- 
trait owned by the Earl of Morton — still the 
same face, only older by many years, sadder by 
half an eternity. Eighteen years of captivity, with 
all that goes with it, have done their work. 
The fourth was painted at Fotheringay. The 
end is already in sight. It is a face altogether 
sad and thoughtful, as of one who had little happi- 
ness to look back upon and nothing at all to which 
to look forward. Still later came the memorial 



100 Royal Women 

portrait. It reveals a face no longer beautiful, 
perhaps, but powerful — a dignified, majestic 
figure, every inch a queen. 

On the walls at Abbotsford, the home of Sir 
Walter Scott, hangs a picture of Mary Stuart 
which all the world should see. It is the severed 
head — the face after death. No words of tongue 
or pen can tell so plainly the story of her life and 
suffering. In looking at it, one feels instinctively 
that she has found in death "that peace which the 
world cannot give." 

There is no spot in that great cathedral where 
rest the royal dead of England around which 
romance and poetry cluster more thickly than that 
where the Stuarts lie asleep. In a tiny space, com- 
paratively, only seven by twelve feet and six feet 
high, are packed on and around the casket of the 
Queen of Scots, the bodies of Arabella Stuart, of 
Henry Prince of Wales, Henry of Oatlands, Mary 
Princess of Orange, Prince Rupert, Elizabeth, the 
beautiful Queen of Bohemia, William Duke of 
Gloucester, the ten children of James Second, the 
eighteen children of Queen Anne, only one of whom 
required a full-sized casket, all the illegitimate chil- 
dren of Charles Second, Charles himself, William 
and Mary, and Queen Anne with whom the House 
of Stuart ceased to be. The silence which fills the 
chapel is profound, and who can stand within it and 



Mary Queen of Scots 101 

not ask himself this question : What was it — the 
original sin, never forgiven or forgotten — which 
brought down upon this royal family a doom so 
terrible, so complete? 




Ill 

A VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION 

Marie Antoinette 




Marie Antoinette in youth 



Ill 

A VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION 

Marie Antoinette 

THE French Revolution fell with deadly 
violence upon the reign of Louis Six- 
teenth. The sins of the father were visited 
upon the children, not only to the third and fourth, 
but to the tenth and twelfth generations. Nothing 
could have turned the tempest then from its 
chosen path. The great death-struggle between 
Royalty and Revolution was already on when Louis 
Sixteenth came to the throne. 

In his History of the French Revolution, Carlyle 
makes use of a striking illustration. He says : 

The oak tree grows silently in the forest for a thousand 
years. But there comes one day the woodsman with his ax, 
and the oak announces its own destruction when, with far- 
sounding crash, it falls. How silent also was the planting of 
that acorn, dropped it may be from the lap of some wandering 
wind! Not even the most observant could tell you when the 
tree first put forth its leaves. These things befell not 
suddenly. They were slowly done — not in an hour, nor a 
day, nor a century, but in the flight of ages. 
105 



106 Royal Women 

It was exactly thus that conditions in France, 
born as they were of centuries of abuse, grew into 
a desperate disease, necessitating a desperate 
remedy. The great French Revolution is without 
a parallel in history. 

Away back in 1S74 there was a king in France 
called Louis Ninth. He was a pious and gentle 
man, with integrity of character and sincerity of 
purpose. He left the affairs of his kingdom in the 
hands of his mother, Blanche of Castile, and be- 
came the devoted leader of the Seventh Crusade. 
He gave his life for the cause. The French people 
loved him and forever afterward honored his 
memory. They called him Saint Louis. 

It is a far flight from 1274 to 1774, but the 
kings of France during those five hundred years 
made France what she was. For a few years after 
the death of Saint Louis, each king followed his 
predecessor, reigned a few years and died, and the 
affairs of the kingdom changed but little. But as 
early as the days of Philip Fifth, that turbulence 
and disorder, the final outcome of which was the 
French Revolution, began to seethe in France. 
Sometimes it slumbered for a generation and then 
broke forth anew. In the long line of monarchs, 
only a few are worthy of mention. True, there 
was Henry of Navarre, who stole an hour every 
day in which to play with his children — who used 



Marie Antoinette 107 

to wander through the streets of Paris in disguise 
that he might see the children of the city — who 
grieved because every peasant in his kingdom could 
not have a fowl for dinner on Sunday. He loved 
his people and tried to better their condition, but 
those who followed after him promptly undid what 
he had accomplished. 

The immediate predecessors of Louis Sixteenth 
did nothing great for France. It is true that Louis 
Fourteenth, when asked whom he would have for his 
minister, said, "I will have no minister. I will 
have no council. I am the State ! " It is true that 
during his reign he was the finest figure on the 
stage of Europe. It is true that the splendor of 
his court outshone that of any other court in 
Christendom, but it is also true that the people 
paid for the maintenance of that court by the sweat 
of their brows. It is likewise true that its splendor 
was fictitious, its brilliancy artificial ; that the char- 
acter of the king contained few elements of real 
strength or greatness; that when his reign was 
ended (and it was the longest reign in history — 
seventy -two years) his system of government was 
as miserable and decrepit as himself. It is the 
custom to speak of the reign of Louis Fourteenth 
as an epoch of great industrial, literary, and 
artistic progress. But the author of the History 
of Civilization has punctured this bubble and has 



108 Boyal Women 

proved the intellectual greatness of the age to have 
been a fiction. 

It is not often that a king about to die gives 
advice to a great-grandson about to succeed him, 
but this was the case with Louis Fourteenth. His 
son was dead. His grandson was dead, and his 
great-grandson stood ready to take his place. To 
him the old king said: 

"My son, you are about to become king of a 
great nation. I most strongly recommend you 
this : Keep the peace with your neighbors. I have 
been too fond of war. Do not follow my example 
in that, nor in my too lavish expenditure. Seek 
advice in all things, and endeavor to accomplish 
that which I have not been able to do." 

Little did Louis Fifteenth heed the advice of his 
great-grandfather. He made a Marquise of the 
butcher's daughter and gave not only himself but 
the affairs of his country into her keeping. As 
his illustrious great-grandfather had said, "I am 
the State," Louis Fifteenth might well have said, 
" Madame Pompadour and I are the State ! " At 
last he died, of loathsome and terrible diseases, 
leaving a kingdom exhausted of its resources by 
his vices and extravagances, a state badly in debt 
as the result of his needless and inglorious wars, a 
people burdened with taxation, a tottering fabric 
of government rotten to the core — and this was 



Marie Antoinette 109 

Louis Sixteenth's inheritance ! Moreover, a change 
had come over the spirit of the age. The people 
refused to be further ignored. The fiery spirit of 
aroused France was no longer to be lulled to sleep 
with cradle-songs. The days of pleasure were 
things of the past, and the poor young king, whose 
ancestors for five hundred years had sown the wind, 
was left to reap the whirlwind. 

In the midst of that cyclonic and all-pervasive 
storm, the French Revolution, the great, illumined 
figure of a woman stood out in bold relief. 
It was that of the queen — Marie Antoinette. 
About her all things seemed to center. Her story, 
rightly read, can excite neither malignity nor 
envy, for a feeling adverse to her cannot exist 
which the recollection of her misfortunes does 
not convert into pity. Neither is it possible to 
separate her story from that of the king. They 
were one and the same. The sympathy which 
existed between them gave them courage to struggle 
on and fight together to the end. The love they 
bore each other and their little children became, in 
time of stress, their refuge and their strength. 

We know that policy in monarchs is paramount 
to every other consideration. Maria Theresa was 
Empress of Austria and had four daughters. Like 
her envied contemporary, Catherine of Russia, she 
consulted no ties of nature in the disposal of her 



110 Royal Women 

children. She hoped that Louis Fifteenth would 
aid her in recovering some of the territory which 
the king of Prussia had wrested from her ancient 
domain. She knew the character of old Louis to 
the letter, and drew her own conclusions as to the 
effect which youth and beauty would haA^e upon 
such a king and such a court. Therefore the 
youngest and most beautiful of the daughters was 
set apart for France. As for the future bride- 
groom, then sixteen years of age, who was later to 
be Louis Sixteenth, he was left outside the calcula- 
tion. Whether the plan appealed to him mattered 
little to this scheming empress-mother. So during 
the time when Madame Pompadour ruled not only 
the king but all France as well, Maria Theresa 
proposed the union of the Dauphin with her daugh- 
ter, Marie Antoinette. She flattered the king's 
favorite in the most wily fashion until the plan 
received her hearty support. She left no stone 
unturned until the proxy of the Dauphin had been 
sent to Vienna to wed the princess in his name. 

Here beginneth the story of the tragedy! All 
the zeal with which this union was supported could 
not subdue the prejudice against it. France has 
never looked with complacency upon alliances with 
the house of Austria, and the greatest distaste for 
this one prevailed, not only among the members of 
the court but within the royal family itself. Louis 




r^ 



Louis Sixtetiith, Kiii"; of France 



Marie Antoinette 111 

Fifteenth had two unmarried daughters. They had 
had much to do with the care and education of the 
Dauphin. They openly expressed, their aversion, 
their hostihty. It was useless. The feeling against 
Austria which prevailed in France was too strong 
to be overcome by any state policy, and where 
Maria Theresa meditated a triumph for herself she 
built for her daughter a scaffold. Before the little 
bride arrived in France, Madame Pompadour died, 
and the interests of Austria sank to the lowest 
depths. The old king was again w^ithout a favorite, 
but the Due de Richelieu was at hand and supplied 
Louis Fifteenth with the last of his mistresses — 
the notorious Comtesse du Barri. When the little 
Austrian princess arrived she met scarcely a friend 
and an army of foes. 

Her enemies were both open and concealed. 
They beset her on all sides. The two maiden aunts 
of the Dauphin were especially implacable. They 
had tried to steer the young prince away from the 
channel in which Louis Fifteenth had travelled, and, 
if they did nothing else, they fostered in him a 
disgust for licentiousness and a regard for morality 
which were the strongest elements in his character. 
But they left no means unessayed to steel him 
against his prospective bride. They impressed upon 
him the misfortunes which must spring upon his 
family and himself from Austrian influence, and 



112 Royal Women 

such was their ascendancy over him that for a long 
time it prevailed against all the allurement of a 
young and beautiful woman whose charming amia- 
bility, vivacity, and graceful manners became the 
universal admiration. But Marie Antoinette was 
a simple, unsophisticated, whole-hearted girl, and, 
naturally, was unable to cope with all of these 
prejudices. 

On the day after her arrival the state dinner took 
place in the beautiful palace of Versailles. Of 
Louis Fourteenth's stupendous extravagance, this 
palace is the most colossal monument. Voltaire 
called it the abyss of expense. But Louis Four- 
teenth wished to be thought immortal. So he built 
this palace and moved his court there, because, 
forsooth, from the windows of his former residence 
in the Tuileries he could see the towers of St. Denis, 
where all the dead and gone kings of France lay 
buried ! 

From foundation to dome, the brilliant lights 
glittered and sparkled. The palace was filled with 
courtiers in gala dress. Outwardly all was as it 
should be. But within the state dining-room the 
daughter of Maria Theresa was filled with dismay 
and anger when she found herself seated on the 
king's left hand and Madame du Barri on his 
right. Three of the ladies-in-waiting arose from 



Marie Antoinette 113 

the table and left the palace, never to return until 
after the old king's death. Marie Antoinette com- 
plained to her royal mother of this indignity ; but 
the latter, too wise to interfere so early in the game, 
sent back the laconic answer : " Where the sovereign 
himself presides, no guest is objectionable." 

This was the inauspicious beginning. After it 
the difficulties of her position doubled and multi- 
plied. The first time the wrath of the court fell 
upon her was on account of the court costume — 
the enormous hoop-skirts and crinolines. Ever since 
the days of Anne of Austria the court of Versailles 
had been wedded to two things — its etiquette and 
its pageantries. Marie Antoinette was young and 
beautiful — a thing which the antiquated court 
dowagers could not forgive. She determined that 
she would not wear these monstrosities, and clad 
her girlish figure in sweet and simple gowns. The 
habitues of the court cried out in dismay and com- 
plained to the king. Louis remonstrated with her. 
He told her how the factories, trades-people, cos- 
tumers, et cetera, would suffer if she did anything 
to lessen the expensive and gorgeous court costume 
then en vogue. At last she agreed to wear it in 
public if in private she might dress as she pleased. 
This permission the king granted her; but while 
the court ladies suddenly imitated everything she 



114} Royal Women 

did and wore, they continued to cry out against 
her as a Martin Luther of the fashions — and what 
greater crime could there be in France? 

The first lady-in-waiting was Madame de 
Noailles. She was a thorn in Marie Antoinette's 
flesh, but the position was hereditary in her family. 
Capability and fitness had nothing to do with the 
case. Her element was etiquette, but it was the 
etiquette of ages before the flood. She was method- 
ical in all things. She had a rule for everything — 
how to sit down, how to stand up, how to go to 
bed, how to get up again. Marie Antoinette's 
sense of the ridiculous was too strong not to burst 
forth at sight of her. She gave her the laughable 
title of Madame Etiquette — a title which, though 
conferred in merriment, was never forgiven. One 
day, while walking through the park, the little 
princess stumbled and fell. She refused to rise 
from the ground till someone went for Madame 
Etiquette to show her just how she should do it. 
These and other like escapades, only the sponta- 
neous outburst of spirits of a sixteen-year-old girl, 
were cherished, and in after years, when the oppor- 
tunity came, Madame de Noailles declared against 
the queen in a crisis of great importance. 

Louis Fifteenth, shameless old scamp that he 
was, conceived the brilliant idea of supplanting his 



Marie Antoinette 115 

grandson in the affections of Marie Antoinette and 
making her his own queen. With this end in view, 
he encouraged with all his might the Dauphin's cool- 
ness toward her. He threw every obstacle in the way 
of their becoming even well acquainted with each 
other. Both were young — mere children. They 
had been married by proxy in Vienna, the Dauphin 
being represented by a member of the court. The 
king had their apartments placed at opposite ends 
of the palace. He backed up his attentions with 
diamonds and other pretty gifts, which the little 
princess, in her artlessness, accepted with no 
thought of evil ; and it was at this time that Louis 
Fifteenth gave orders for the famous diamond 
necklace which is a part of Marie Antoinette's 
history. Madame du Barri could not fail to see 
Louis' predilection for his new grand-daughter-in- 
law, and her rage and jealousy knew no bounds. 
With the assistance of the maiden aunts, she used 
every means in her power to get the object of their 
hatred sent back to Vienna. 

By and by, however, the little Dauphiness grew 
weary of her position at court. Utterly ignorant 
of old Louis' designs, so apparent to everyone else, 
she one day complained bitterly to the Duchess of 
Grammont, who was a confidential friend of the 
king, of the fact that she was so entirely separated 



116 Boy at Women 

from her young husband as not to be able even to 
speak to him except in the most pubhc manner. 
The Duchess laughed and said : 

"Well, if I were a young and beautiful wife, 
and neglected as you are, I should certainly not 
trouble myself to remove the obstacle by seeking 
my husband. There are others of superior rank 
read}^ to take his place." 

Marie Antoinette could not understand this allu- 
sion of the Duchess, but it is evident that the latter 
took this opportunity to sound her upon what she 
was commissioned to carry on in favor of the king, 
and that she was led to abandon the project only 
when the princess expressed herself so decidedly in 
favor of her young husband as to leave no doubt in 
the mind of the Duchess as to the groundlessness of 
old Louis' hopes. The king, when he found that he 
could not carry out his plan, took steps to mask his 
villainy. The first of these was to change the 
Dauphin's apartments for some nearer those of his 
wife. 

In time, however, a circumstance occurred which 
made a great change in the relative position of all 
at court. Worn with the excesses of sixty-five 
years, the old king fell ill of smallpox and was 
about to die. Marie Antoinette was frightened. 
She realized what that would mean — also her own 
youth and inexperience. She remembered that she 



Marie Antoinette 117 

and her husband were no more than strangers. She 
thought of his indifference toward her and the 
prejudices which had inspired it. Finally, one 
night, that fateful cry, " The King is Dead — 
Long Live the King ! " echoed and reechoed through 
the long corridors of the palace. She burst into 
tears and exclaimed: 

"Mon Dieu! We are too young to reign!" 
For once the etiquette of the court, which she 
had looked upon as such an abomination, brought 
her happiness, for it required that between the 
death and the burial of the old king the new king 
should not leave his apartments. So, for the first 
time, the young people met and visited with each 
other in unaffected freedom, and away from the 
intrigues and the spies of the court, Louis Six- 
teenth awoke to the loveliness and charm of his 
young w^ife. In fact, he fell madly in love with 
her. It had been more than four years since her 
ambitious mother had sent her forth from Vienna 
to wed an unknown prince filled with prejudice 
not only against her country but herself. From 
this day forth, however, they lived together in the 
closest sympathy and affection. 

The new king was only twenty. He was not 
altogether prepossessing in appearance. He had 
a somewhat uninteresting face. He was large of 
build, and had a deep bass voice which fairly roared 



118 Boyal Women 

when he talked. He was naturally timid, bashful. 
In his younger days, especially, he had not a 
pleasing presence, and those who did not know him 
well called him stupid. He was of a mechanical 
turn of mind. He liked to work at a forge, and 
could make locks and keys quite skillfully. His 
good qualities and virtues were generally known 
and acknowledged, and all France hastened to do 
him honor. After the long and corrupt reign of 
Louis Fifteenth, the most cheering changes were 
expected, on account of the high moral standard 
which it was known Louis Sixteenth had set up for 
himself. Nor was the little queen less beloved at 
this time, except by the few depraved ones who 
were jealous of the wonderful powers of pleasing 
which so eminently distinguished Marie Antoinette 
from the rest of her court. 

The coronation took place in the Cathedral of 
Rheims on the tenth of May, 1774. It is provi- 
dential that the future is hidden from us, else the 
songs of rejoicing on this day might well have 
ended in a dirge! Well would it have been for 
Marie Antoinette had the plotters had their way 
and sent her back to Vienna ! Had she returned 
there, her life might have been spent in that 
domestic peace which was her sole ambition. She 
never cared to be a queen. This was thrust upon 
her. Had she returned she might have gone down 



Marie Antoinette 119 

to the peaceful tomb of her august ancestors, 
leaving the page of history unstained by its 
greatest crime. 

But this period of the queen's happiness was 
brief and fleeting. The intriguers were at work. 
Every little act, every innocent move, they com- 
mented upon with damaging effect, and managed 
to diffuse a strong impression of her want of 
feeling. Her education had been most imperfect. 
Her mother had purposely had it so. She felt this 
keenly when she went to France, and being con- 
scious of it, was inclined to avoid those women of 
the court who were well educated and who would 
have been of great service to her. In after years 
she strove to remedy this lack of early training, 
and when she was herself a mother determined that 
her children should not suffer from errors of which 
she felt herself to be the victim. The avoidance 
of the well-informed women of the court was fatal 
to her, for it planted the seeds for the future 
accusations as to her frivolity and heartlessness. 

One of the earliest of the paltry complaints 
against her was because she did not counterfeit 
deep grief at the death of the old king. When 
the court made its visit of condolence to the new 
king, not finding the nineteen-year-old queen 
bathed in hypocritical tears, they declared her the 
rudest and most indecorous of princesses. The 



120 Royal Women 

next ridiculous complaint was because the natural 
modesty and womanliness of the queen rendered 
unbearable to her the public ceremony of dressing 
herself which had been for so long customary at 
the French court. The toilette of the French 
woman of that day was an affair quite beyond our 
American comprehension. From time immemorial, 
the toilet of the ladles of the court, and of the 
queen in particular, had been a public ceremony ! 
Anyone who happened to be present, any dignitary 
who had asked for an audience, was invited, as a great 
honor, to be present at the queen's toilet. Marie 
Antoinette endured this edifying performance for 
about ten days, and then declared that she would 
have no more of it. The first reform she intro- 
duced was the internal discipline of her own apart- 
ments. She set aside a room where, with the 
assistance of her maid only, she could make her 
toilet In comfort, by herself. She w^as delighted to 
find that this move on her part was highly approved 
by the king. That approval was all she sought. 
Another complaint was that the queen was not only 
plain in her attire, but economical. She made her 
morning visits in simple gowns and small hats. 
This circumstance gave great umbrage to the other 
princesses who never showed themselves, from the 
time they arose till they retired, except in full dress. 
This economy on the part of the queen exasperated 



Marie Antoinette 121 

her slanderers. The most unaccountable of all the 
popular errors respecting Marie Antoinette is the 
charge of personal extravagance and prodigality so 
unjustly laid against her and spread with such 
industry, not only in France but throughout all 
Europe. It was only one link in the great chain 
which her enemies were weaving, which was to make 
her court responsible for the bad state of the public 
finances. 

Not long after she became queen, Louis Six- 
teenth made his wife a present of Petit Trianon, a 
pretty chateau not for from Versailles. This little 
estate was never a palace or a castle. It was a 
charming country house, with pretty gardens, shady 
walks, tall trees, and a little artificial lake. Here, 
when she could no longer endure the w^eariness of 
her court, she gathered her family and her ladies 
about her and played that she was a simple peasant 
woman who had no royal cares. Dressed in muslin 
dresses, she strolled along the paths, feeding the 
chickens, and often joining in a game of blind 
man's buff. In one of the little buildings she had 
a dairy, and she and her ladies laughed with glee 
if the butter turned out a success. In another 
structure was the mill. King Louis played the 
miller and carried the sacks on his broad shoulder, 
like a tiller of the soil. Here the only happy days 
she knew in her adopted country were spent, and 



122 Royal Women 

here she was when the storm broke with such fearful 
violence over France. 

Historians tell us of the fabulous sums expended 
upon this little estate. This, too, was a link in the 
chain forged by her enemies. The furniture in 
Petit Trianon was all old, taken from unused 
apartments of former queens in the palace of Ver- 
sailles. The boudoir held the furnishings of Anne 
of Austria's chamber, and she, like Marie Antoi- 
nette, purchased such things out of her private 
purse. The latter's allowance as queen of France 
was three hundred thousand francs — sixty thou- 
sand dollars. The expense account of one of her 
chamberlains contains the following statement: 

"The queen is liberal, generous, and very chari- 
table. She pays all her bills promptly and regu- 
larly, the expenses of the household at Petit 
Trianon, her dresses, jewels, millinery, everything, 
in fact, except her court establishment, which is 
paid out of the civil list. She is the first queen in 
Europe, is obliged to keep up the most luxurious 
and refined couit in Europe; yet not a franc 
of her personal expense comes from the public 
treasury. Everything is paid from her private 
allowance." 

Three hundred thousand francs is an infinitely 
less sum than Louis Fourteenth lavished yearly 
upon Madame de Montespan, and less than half 



Marie Antoinette 123 

what Louis Fifteenth expended on either Pompa- 
dour or du Barri. Out of respect for the memory 
of his grandfather, and in order not to dishonor 
the dignity of the throne of France, Louis Six- 
teenth destroyed his private papers. But it may 
be seen clearly from the register, still in existence, 
that these two women amassed more property in 
diamonds and other valuables than did all the 
queens of France from the days of Catherine di 
Medicis to the days of Marie Antoinette. Alas 
that the young king could not foresee what a tower 
of strength these papers would have been to him 
when confronted with the accusers of his unfortu- 
nate wife in establishing an honorable contrast 
between his own and the former reigns! 

The king's career exhibits no superfluous per- 
sonal expenditure. Its economy was most rigid. 
No monarch was ever more scrupulous with the 
public money. The king himself had neither public 
nor private predilections, no dilapidated minister 
for a favorite, no courtesan mistress, no fondness 
for gambling; in fact, no vices of character. 

Look forward for a moment to the record of 
those who followed after him. When the day of 
blood and vengeance — such vengeance as the 
human race, never before nor since, has taken upon 
itself, that so-called and w^ell-named Reign of 
Terror — was ushered in, a Revolutionary Tribunal 



124 Royal Women 

was created, dominated by three terrible men — 
Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. These men began 
a sort of semi-legal massacre of all who dared 
oppose their wishes. The story of the three, in 
detail, is long. But a young girl named Charlotte 
Corday conceived it her duty to rid France of a 
monster, and plunged a knife into Marat's heart, 
meeting death at the guillotine therefor. Each of 
these men had a following of his own, and after 
the death of Marat a deadly rivalry began between 
the Dantonists (so named after their leader) and 
the followers of Robespierre. This last member of 
the trio, Maximilian de Robespierre, was a man of 
most inexplicable character. Carlyle calls him The 
Sea-green Monster. 

Those who have seen Sir Henry Irving's artistic 
impersonation of this man will have him in mind 
exactly as he was. His figure was so slight as to 
be almost spectral in his younger days. He was 
angular and awkward in bearing. His mouth was 
large, his lips thin, his voice high-pitched and 
monotonous. At the age of twenty-seven he 
became a judge, and in his official capacity was 
obliged to condemn a convicted criminal to death. 
So great was his horror of the circumstance that 
he immediately resigned and became an advocate 
of the abolition of capital punishment. Nor can 
one suspect that this sensitiveness was in any 




bjD 



Marie Antoinette 125 

measure affectation. Yet during those days when 
lawlessness, anarchy, and crime possessed Paris, a 
fearful reaction took place in this man's nature. 
His career henceforth was appalling. He became 
the most terrible butcher of the Revolution. He 
succeeded in getting the convention to pass a Law 
of the Suspected, and woe unto him against whom 
the finger of suspicion was pointed! The prisons 
were filled with men, women, and children, many of 
whom knew not why they were there. Every day 
they called the roll and led them forth to die. No 
age nor sex nor condition was spared, and the 
most beautiful city of the modern world became a 
horror too great to contemplate. Robespierre had 
the satisfaction of seeing his former friend and co- 
laborer, Danton, in the cart on the way to execu- 
tion. A little later the Girondists came to their 
last night in prison, and on the morrow followed 
the same path. Robespierre, the once-powerful, 
began to lose ground, and foreseeing that his day 
was over, he became once more the coward and 
the craven. He shot but failed to kill himself in the 
hall of the Convention, and his judges, determined 
that he should have a taste of his own medicine, 
carried him limp and almost lifeless to the guillo- 
tine, where he was executed. But while these men 
lived the Revolutionary Tribunal was all-powerful. 
The Assembly was in the hands of the Tribunal, 



126 Royal Women 

Paris was in the hands of the Assembly. France 
was in the hands of Paris. Power was in the 
hands of Robespierre, Marat and Danton, and to 
resist them was to die. These men, before they had 
acquired sufficient influence to make themselves 
heard in the convention, had, by means of pamph- 
lets, papers, and publications, written and printed 
in dark cellars or garrets, kept alive in the public 
mind the suspicion that the wife of the king was 
squandering the public money. 

It is only by contrast that we see things in their 
true light. Here is the report of the ministerial 
expense during the short time that these sworn 
enemies of royalty held sway in France. This is the 
salary list : 

The Minister of Justice 30 million francs 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs....-*.. 50 million francs 

The Minister of Finance 200 million francs 

The Minister of the Navy 600 million francs 

The Minister of the Interior 900 million francs 

The Minister of War 1,200 million francs 

Nearly three thousand millions of francs for the 
support of the brutes who murdered their sovereign, 
one reason being that it pleased them to believe her 
extravagant ! 

No account of Marie Antoinette's life would be 
complete without the story of her friendship with 
the Princess Lamballe. She was still the wife of 



Marie Antoinette 127 

the Dauphin when this friendship was formed 
which had such a tragic termination. The princess 
was the sister-in-law of the Duke of Orleans, who, 
though married to her husband's sister, sought by 
every means he could think of to get the princess 
into his power. When he found all his attempts 
unavailing, he wreaked his vengeance in a peculiar 
manner. He exerted his influence over her young 
husband to such an extent that he was completely 
under his sway. He led him into all sorts of 
debauchery, until at last he died in his early 
twenties, a mental, moral, and physical wreck, 
leaving the princess a widow at nineteen. Marie 
Antoinette, hearing of the duke's cruelty, sought 
her out, and when she became queen appointed her 
superintendent of the royal household. 

The queen's friendship for the princess and the 
fact that she was given so high a position at court 
could not fail to add to the former's enemies. The 
Countess de Noailles (Madame Etiquette) instantly 
resigned, because under the new arrangement her 
orders from the queen must come through the 
princess. The Duke of Orleans was maddened by 
her appointment, seeing in the queen's favor a 
check to his future persecutions. In fact, it is said 
upon good authority that the interest which Her 
Majesty took in the Princess Lamballe planted the 
first seeds of that unrelenting and misguided hos- 



128 Royal Women 

tility which, in the deadHest times of the Revolu- 
tion, animated the Orleanists against the throne. 

When the princess had been in Her Majesty's 
service about a year, another event matured which 
gave one more opportunity for her enemies to 
attack her. This was the introduction at court of 
the Countess Pohgnac. Remembering the disfavor 
which her own appointment had occasioned, the 
princess distinctly foresaw the consequences when 
the queen formed a sudden attachment for the 
countess and showed her great partiality. The 
latter had all the qualifications of a royal favorite. 
She was unassuming, refined, good-natured, and 
free from haughtiness. The princess herself was far 
too beautiful and too noble of character to cherish 
envy or jealousy. Besides, she was related, not very 
distantly, to the king. She loved the queen, and 
although she saw that the attachment between Her 
Majesty and the Countess Polignac was pure and 
disinterested, she knew that a friendship between a 
queen and a subject would be considered almost 
from a criminal point of view. Moreover, the 
Polignacs were not in circumstances to afford the 
luxuries of court life, so in order to repair the 
deficiencies of their fortunes they represented to 
Her Majesty that unless resources were supplied 
her friend must leave the court. The queen, to 
secure the society of her favorite, supplied the funds 



Marie Antoinette 129 

(out of her own allowance, it is true), but by this 
act she lost forever the affections of the old nobility. 
In gaining one friend she lost a host. 

In vain did the princess endeavor to make her 
sovereign see and feel the danger. Had she read 
the Book of Fate she could not have foreseen more 
distinctly the results which actually took place from 
this unfortunate connection. Like many another 
woman, the queen only clung the more closely to 
attachments from which people desired to estrange 
her. The Countess Polignac was the governess of 
the royal children, and the interest which inspires a 
mother toward those who have charge of her chil- 
dren is the most natural thing in the world. The 
countess, although her salary w^as no more than that 
allotted to all former governesses, was tempted to 
make a display, which was injurious both to herself 
and the queen. Before long the blackest calumny 
against her began to appear in prints, caricatures, 
songs, and pamphlets of every description. 

Then followed another episode, trifling in itself, 
but which proved disastrous in reality. Beau- 
marchais' opera, The Marriage of Figaro, was 
produced upon the stage of Paris. Information 
was brought the king that it was full of slanderous 
and indecorous allusions to the royal family, and 
he forbade its production unless these were elimi- 
nated. This he was assured had been done, but on 



130 Royal Women 

the opening night, which was attended by both 
king and queen, it was evident that instead of being 
omitted they had been added to and improved upon. 
King Louis was furious, but it was too late to 
remedy it then. The next day the papers were 
filled with the story, and this very event prepared 
all minds for the blow which the queen was about 
to receive from the infamous plot which concerned 
the diamond necklace.* 

A number of people were concerned with the 
story of the diamond necklace. First of all came 
the Cardinal de Rohan. Such a character as this 
man was can exist only in a society which is on the 



* When we cease to study "history superficially and begin to 
dig down into the depths, we are surprised at the supply of 
absurdities which every historical period adds to those which 
have gone before. It is told that when the people of France 
were starving and Marie Antoinette was made aware of it by 
the collection of a motley crowd in the courtyard clamoring that 
thev had no bread, she said : 

''No bread? Why don't they eat cake, then?" 

Like the story of the diamond necklace, this is entirely 
untrue. In Austria, where she was born, there is a little cake 
made by the peasants which is so cheap as to cost almost 
nothing. Even the poorest of the peasants, as a general thing, 
could manage to have the little cakes even when bread was out 
of the question. What the queen really said when she was told 
the reason for the clamor below, was said in kindness and pity : 
"No bread? Can they not have the cakes, then?" A distinction, 
truly — with a difference! 

The same may be said of the episode of the diamond necklace. 
When the writer was studying the history of France in school 
she learned from the text-book that when the people of Paris 
were starving, the queen of France bought a diamond necklace 
composed of the finest stones which the world could produce, at 
a cost of a million six hundred thousand francs. Imagine her 
astonishment some years later to find the story absolutely false. 
The queen was the victim of a strange and, it would seem, 
Improbable plot. 



Marie Antoinette 131 

point of perishing. He was a thorough man of the 
world. He preferred drawing-rooms and boudoirs 
to churches and sacristies. He was the incarnation 
of all the elegances and all the vices of a crumbling 
society. His manner of life was regal. His 
gallantry was notorious. He was always at the 
theatre. His prodigality was excessive, and the 
conduct of his suite most scandalous. He was a 
huge volume of evil language which ill-suited his 
position as minister and priest. Marie Antoinette 
despised him, because, during her early days in 
France, he had joined in the plot of her enemies to 
have her sent back to Vienna. He even went fur- 
ther than that. He formed an intrigue by which, 
when she had been returned to her mother in dis- 
grace, her next oldest sister should be brought to 
France and married to sixty-year-old Louis Fif- 
teenth. Naturally, when all this reached the ears 
of the queen, the status of the Cardinal, so far as 
she was concerned, was determined for all time. 
He imagined that she only stood between him and 
the height of his ambition, which was to be 
appointed Prime Minister. In his vanity he won- 
dered how he, so glorious and fascinating, the Car- 
dinal Prince of Rohan, could fail to make the con- 
quest of a woman! But the queen continued to 
maintain her icy attitude. She never addressed one 
word to the Grand Almoner of France. This he 



182 Royal Women 

lamented exceedingly, and while seeking with 
feverish anxiety some means to obtain the good 
graces of his sovereign, he met two people who 
could, he thought, be of great service to him. These 
two were first, Cagliostro, a fortune-teller, a char- 
latan and impostor who was just then all the rage 
in Paris, and second, the Countess de la Motte, 
who was, even more than Cagliostro, the Cardinal's 
evil genius. 

Madame de la Motte was one of those unhappy 
natures which find satisfaction only in sinful occu- 
pation. Strange are the vicissitudes of destiny! 
The blood of Henry Second flowed in her veins, and 
the Valois, that race once proud and powerful, was 
represented now only by this little adventuress who, 
in spite of her illustrious origin, was very poor. 
True, the king allowed her an annual pension of 
ninety-six hundred francs, but a young, ambitious 
woman, fond of luxury and dress, could not live 
upon such a sum. She wished to make a fortune. 
Any way was good enough. She was married to 
a man as poor as herself and they lived in fur- 
nished lodgings in Paris. Often they were com- 
pelled to deposit their belongings with the wig- 
maker for protection. In 1784 she pledged her 
dresses at the pawn-brokers. But suddenly a great 
change came. All at once this woman had plenty 
of money. How did it happen? 



Marie Antoinette 133 

Madame de la Motte had had an audience with 
the Cardinal Rohan and had besought him to trans- 
mit for her a petition to the king. The Cardinal 
thought his petitioner very pretty and at once 
became interested in her welfare. He was surprised 
when he learned in what want the court had left 
the poor little descendant of Henry Second — 
whose strongest arguments were a trim figure and 
a pair of fine blue eyes. When the bold adventuress 
saw the Cardinal's fascination she saw also that she 
had found a victim. Her plans were soon laid. 
She learned with exultation that he would be willing 
to pay almost any sum to the one who would bring 
about a reconciliation with the queen. She at 
once devised the means of ruining him. 

Suddenly she pretended that her lot had 
changed — that fortune was smiling upon her. She 
gave him to understand that she had had an audi- 
ence with the queen, that Her Majesty had heaped 
benefits upon her, had, in fact, made her a confi- 
dante, and had written her letters full of the most 
amiable feeling. She showed these letters, written 
by a clever scoundrel whom she had engaged for a 
secretary. She convinced the Cardinal that she 
often spoke of him and that the queen had com- 
missioned her to ask him to send her his apology 
in writing. This document the Cardinal placed in 
Madame's hands and was told by her later that the 



134 Royal Women 

queen had accepted it, had begged him to have dis- 
cretion and patience — that before long she would 
announce the high position to which she intended 
to call him. 

In order to carry out the plan to the letter 
Madame must have paper bearing the royal crest. 
This she managed to obtain and then, with the 
assistance of her secretary, she forged a series of 
letters from the queen to the Cardinal, to which he 
replied, placing his answers in Madame's hands. 
Meanwhile he was acting as banker. He had given 
her nearly a hundred thousand francs for the ines- 
timable favor which apparently she had procured 
for him. The fraud seemed everywhere triumphant, 
yet Madame grew restless and uneasy. Blind as 
he was, might not the Cardinal discover that all 
was not as it should be? Was he not likely to 
notice the contrast between the friendly tone of the 
letters and the attitude of contempt which the 
queen maintained in public toward the man who 
imagined himself in her favor? It was necessary 
to guard against such a contingency, but how ? 

Then followed the most diabolical part of the 
whole plot. One day when Madame's secretary was 
wandering through the park he saw a woman 
whose resemblance to the queen was most striking. 
He followed her to her lodgings and found that 
she was a young, unmarried woman who lived in 



Marie Antoinette 135 

the neighborhood. He called upon her and told 
her that a lady by whom he was employed (in fact 
a lady of the court) would come to see her the 
next day on a matter of great importance. The 
next day Madame went, and had, of course, no diffi- 
culty in cajoling the poor girl. She showed her 
the forged letters from the queen to prove that she 
was really in Her Majesty's confidence. She told 
her that the queen had asked her to find someone 
to do something for her which she would explain 
later. Now, Marie Antoinette's love of fun and 
practical jokes was a well-known fact, and the girl, 
who was convinced that this little scene was desired 
by the queen for her own amusement, had no other 
thought than to play her part to the best of her 
ability. Her instructions were as follows : 

She was to put on a white dress trimmed with 
red (which would be furnished her) and accompany 
Madame to the park at twilight. There a great 
nobleman would come up to her. She should hand 
him a letter (also furnished her) and a rose, saying 
only, "You know what this means!" 

The Cardinal, believing that the queen was about 
to grant the promised interview, was there. He 
bowed low over the hand of his supposed sovereign 
and was about to speak when Madame appeared as 
if in great alarm and said, " Come quick ! Quick ! ! 
The king!" They fled in one direction and the 



136 Royal Women 

Cardinal in another, the latter believing that she 
who had for so long held him at bay had melted 
at lest and in token of her forgiveness had given 
him a rose. The plot had succeeded beyond the 
adventuress' fairest hopes. 

Then followed the episode of the diamond neck- 
lace. For a long time the true story of this affair 
was shrouded in obscurity and was the subject of 
many commentaries and discussions. Now, however, 
one can easily get at all the evidence in the case — 
all the documents concerning the people accused: 
the judges, the public, the investigation, the trial, 
and the verdict. 

The origin of the diamond necklace has already 
been told. Old Louis Fifteenth, when he thought 
he would supplant his grandson in the affections 
of Marie Antoinette, gave orders for the necklace 
to be made of the finest stones that were to be had. 
So the crown jewelers began to collect the dia- 
monds. Before a third of them were collected, 
however, the plan of the king had failed to work. 
Then he thought he would give them to du Barri, 
but he died, and the jewelers were left with the 
diamonds on their hands. After the accession of 
Louis Sixteenth they brought the necklace to him 
and urged him to purchase it for the queen. He 
sent for her, and although she thought it very 
handsome, she was most averse to having such a sum 



Marie Antoinette 137 

spent upon her and said that the money could be 
better expended in some manner useful to the gov- 
ernment or to enlarge the park at Versailles. The 
jeweler obtained an audience with the queen and 
assured her that he was ruined if he could not dis- 
pose of the diamonds, but she told him firmly that 
the king had offered to buy them for her and she 
had refused. She told him to take the necklace 
apart and sell the single stones, adding, "You can 
easily dispose of it in this manner, so don't go 
drown yourself." Imagine her astonishment, then, 
a few weeks later, to receive a letter from the 
jeweler saying that he took profound satisfaction 
in the thought that the most sumptuous array of 
diamonds in the world was, after all, to belong to 
the best and most beautiful of queens. 

Unable to understand this, she sent the Princess 
Lamballe to the jeweler, who was thunderstruck to 
learn that she came to deny that the queen had 
ordered the diamonds. His story filled the princess 
with horror, for she saw at a glance the snare which 
had been set for the queen. The crown jeweler was 
not mad. Like the Cardinal, he was the victim of 
a bold and infamous intrigue. How did it all 
happen ? 

Madame de la Motte, always on the lookout for 
new frauds, saw how the matter might be made the 
occasion of an unprecedented swindle, and her fer- 



138 Royal Women 

tile imagination turned toward carrying it out. 
She told the jeweler that the queen desired to pur- 
chase the necklace which she had long wanted, but 
being averse to treating directly with the firm, she 
had entrusted the affair to a certain nobleman in her 
confidence. Then, by means of a steady stream of 
forged letters, she had succeeded in persuading the 
Cardinal that the queen wished to get possession 
of the necklace without the king's knowledge and 
pay for it in installments from her private purse — 
that she gave this proof of her friendliness to him- 
self by allowing him to arrange the affair for her. 
He went to the jeweler's and the contract containing 
the conditions of the sale was placed in his hands 
for the queen's signature. A few days later it was 
back in the jeweler's possession and written across 
the face of it were the words : " Approved. Marie 
Antoinette de France" — forged, of course. The 
next day the Cardinal went to Madame's lodgings 
accompanied by a servant who carried the necklace 
in Its case. She told him that the queen had sent a 
special messenger for it. The Cardinal saw Madame 
give the case to the queen's supposed messenger, 
and the great fraud was accomplished. 

From this day forth, until her discovery, Madame 
lived In luxury. The golden stream never ran dry. 
The necklace was taken apart. She kept for her- 
self the small stones which could not be identified, 



Marie Antoinette 139 

but English jewelers bought the large ones and 
when the investigation was opened sent the papers 
to Louis Sixteenth to prove it. All the time, the 
queen had been in ignorance of the whole affair, 
but at last had to be told. Her indignation was 
indescribable and she declared that all these hideous 
vices should be unmasked. So, a day or so later, 
as the Cardinal was on his way to say mass in the 
chapel at Versailles, he was arrested. Triumphantly 
he produced the letter giving him authority to buy 
the jewels. But the king only glanced at it and 
said: 

" You can not be so ignorant, Prince, as not to 
know that the queens of France sign only the bap- 
tismal name. Did not this signature, Marie 
Antoinette de France, prove to you that the queen 
did not write that letter?" 

Then, seeing the Cardinal's astonishment and his 
distress, the king told him that he desired not his 
conviction but his justification, whereupon the whole 
story came out. 

The prelate was locked up in the Bastile, for 
Louis Sixteenth, moved by his wife's tears and 
injuries, determined to punish him if he were really 
guilty, and that remained to be seen. All the other 
parties to the fraud found themselves likewise in 
the Bastile, and the investigation was begun. The 
hearing lasted for nine months and in those nine 



140 Royal Women 

months many things happened. Each party had 
its friends and sympathizers. The queen's inno- 
cence in the matter was undisputed, but so many 
elements centered in the trial that the result was 
only what was to be expected. Louis Sixteenth 
held that when a dignitary like the Cardinal became 
entangled in an affair so scandalous he ought to be 
punished like a common felon. The Holy Father 
objected to having one of his Cardinals punished as 
an ordinary criminal. In addition to all this, the 
never-quiet enemies of the queen were secretly at 
work. The revolutionary feeling was growing 
stronger every day. There was want and hunger 
in Paris, and the people were urged to believe that 
their queen had been guilty of this great extrava- 
gance while they could not buy bread. 

The verdict was rendered late at night. The 
Cardinal was acquitted by a majority of three. The 
judgment declared that the words "Approved. 
Marie Antoinette de France" were forged. There 
was not in the whole verdict a single word condemn- 
ing the Cardinal or any mention of his relations 
with Madame de la Motte. The latter, however, 
was condemned to be beaten, naked, with a rope 
around her neck — to be branded with the letter V 
on both shoulders by the public executioner, and 
then taken to the House of Correction to be 
imprisoned for the rest of her life. 



Marie Antoinette 141 

When the verdict was announced, the crowd 
broke forth in uproarious applause. The Cardinal 
received the most enthusiastic ovations on his return 
to his house. But a few hours later there came 
from Louis Sixteenth the command to send back 
the ribbon of the Order of the Holy Ghost, to hand 
in his resignation as Grand Almoner of France, and 
to betake himself to his Abbey of Chaise-Dieu in 
Auvergne. Sensible and reasonable people appre- 
ciated the king's position, but, alas, such people 
were rare in Paris in 1786. 

Visitors to the portrait gallery in the palace of 
Versailles always stop long before one picture which 
has an unusual interest and charm and beauty. It 
is a painting of Marie Antoinette surrounded by 
her children, made by Madame Vigee Lebrun. The 
expression on the queen's face is gentle, full of 
dignity, but dreamy and melancholy. To her right 
a little maid of eight leans against her mother's 
shoulder. On her knees is a two-year-old — Louis 
Charles, the little Duke of Normandy. To the left 
is an empty cradle, the covering of which is upheld 
by a child of five or six who wears the blue ribbon 
and insignia of the Order of the Holy Ghost. It 
is the Dauphin. Even the children's faces are 
thoughtful except the baby, who is at the age still 
when mental suffering is not known. Life has not 
yet become all sorrow for the queen. All the slan- 



142 Royal Women 

ders and evil tongues had not been able to disturb 
the harmony which existed between Louis Sixteenth 
and his wife. They had had peace within, in spite 
of the storms without, but at the time this picture 
was painted, their youngest child, the little Princess 
Sophia Beatrix, had just died, and the queen's heart 
was full of that exquisite anguish which none but a 
mother can feel when her children are no more. 
When the painting was finished it was placed in the 
hall of one of the grand apartments through which 
the queen passed daily on her way to mass. But 
there came a day when she could not endure to 
look at it, and the king, seeing that it affected her 
so sadly, had it removed. To this act we owe the 
preservation of the picture. Had it been left there 
the fish-women and ruffians who attempted to assas- 
sinate the queen and destroy the palace would 
undoubtedly have ruined it. 

One evening not long before this picture was 
made, the queen sat in her boudoir with her friend, 
the Princess Lamballe. Four candles were burning 
on the dressing-table. One went out. The princess 
re-lighted it. The second went out, then the third. 
The queen sprang to her feet and said, "Misfor- 
tune has made me superstitious. If the other candle 
goes out it is certainly an evil omen!" Then the 
fourth candle went out. No doubt a draught was 
responsible for the going out of the candles, but 




Marie Antoinette and her children 



Marie Antoinette 143 

in reality the most terrible blow which had yet be- 
fallen her was at this moment hanging over the 
queen's head. She was about to lose her oldest son, 
the Dauphin, whose birth seven years before had 
filled all France with rejoicing. The little lad, while 
apparently in flourishing health, was attacked sud- 
denly by the rickets, which curved his spine, hol- 
lowed his pretty face, and made his limbs so weak 
that he could not walk. He became so reduced that 
his appearance made a painful impression and his 
mother was unwilling that anyone should see him. 
She knew that the heir to the throne was doomed, 
and beneath her crown she felt the iron nails that 
pierced her brow. The little prince died in the 
night in her arms, and this cruel addition to her 
sorrows broke the queen's heart. Her beautiful 
hair turned snow white, although she was but 
thirty-four years old. 

By the death of the oldest son the little Duke 
of Normandy became the Dauphin. This child, the 
future Louis Seventeenth, destined to so tragic an 
end, was thought at his birth to have been born 
under a lucky star. He was born on Easter Sun- 
day. He was but four years old and a remarkably 
handsome child. Could the queen have looked into 
the future and seen the brutal face of Simon, the 
cobbler, rise like a spectre and walk always beside 
this little one — could she have lifted the curtain 



144 Royal Women 

but for a moment and seen her only daughter, the 
little Duchess of Angouleme, left to face life soli- 
tary an^ alone after she and the good King Louis 
were no more, then, doubtless, she would gladly have 
robed them both for the tomb with her own hands 
and thanked God that the privilege was hers. 

Historians, almost with one accord, accuse Louis 
Sixteenth of w^eakness. Perhaps his abilities were 
not so splendid as those of some, but that charac- 
teristic which has come down to us in history as 
weakness was in reality only an earnest desire to 
keep the peace. The spirit of the queen was roused 
to the highest pitch at the indignities and insults 
heaped upon him, and after the manner of wives 
she urged her husband not to submit to them. But 
that gentle dignity and courtesy which made the 
king beloved of all who knew him, prevailed over 
his desire to retaliate when he knew that retaliation 
meant strife and struggle and hoped that forbear- 
ance might perhaps bring peace. 

It was too late to bring peace to France. It was 
too late when Louis Sixteenth was born to bring 
peace to France. The cauldron had seethed for 
too many centuries for any amount of forbearance 
to bring peace to France. The king summoned the 
States-General Assembly for the purpose of ascer- 
taining the desires of the people and seeing what 
could be done to grant them, but when he did so, 



Marie Antoinette 145 

he signed his own death warrant and that of his 
family and friends. With the assembhng of that 
convention the representatives learned their power, 
and when subjects no longer fear their king the 
days of his rule are done. 

Like the sudden stillness which precedes a sum- 
mer storm, before the thunder begins to rumble 
and the lightning to flash, there came a lull in the 
turmoil in France. There was a brilliant social 
period in which enthusiastic people grouped them- 
selves together and everybody who could read be- 
came a politician. Each imagined that he or she 
(for the politicians were not confined to the men) 
had solved the problem of the deficit in the treas- 
ury, but like the astronomer in the fable, while 
they gazed at the stars they fell into the well. The 
king was deceived by the quiet before the tempest, 
but is it strange that a king is no wiser than his 
generation? His mistakes were only those of his 
time. It would have required, and did require, a 
mighty military genius to quell the insubordination 
which was rife in France. 

Soon it became evident that a great crisis was 
impending. Some one bestowed upon the queen the 
title of Madame Deficit, and the unreasonable anger 
against her broke out anew. She perceived that 
she was betrayed on all sides. In justice to her it 
must be said that she understood fully that the sum- 



146 Royal Women 

moning of the States-General would be fatal to 
royalty. On the day that she learned that the king 
had decided to convoke them she said to her friend, 
the Princess Lamballe, "Louis has permitted the 
States-General to be summoned." And after a mo- 
ment's pause she added, "This important event is 
a gloomy token for France ! " 

She was right. From the opening of the As- 
sembly they set up in opposition to the king what 
they were pleased to call the Nation, but the real 
French Nation was at heart with the king whom 
they loved and honored — whose loyalty and kind- 
ness and virtues they respected and esteemed. But 
there were a few ambitious spirits (as there are in 
every such convention) who were determined to 
impress upon the Assembly and the people at large 
that a handful of revolutionists was the French 
Nation. 

It did not take the queen long to perceive the 
singular malevolence displayed toward the royal 
family which the deputies had brought from their 
provinces. Affable and charming, she endeavored 
to bring them back to kindlier feeling, but nothing 
can correct or improve men of bad faith. She 
heard with the utmost amazement their strange 
questions about the king's alleged intemperance and 
the Asiatic luxury of Petit Trianon. The simplic- 
ity of this country house did not correspond with 



Marie Antoinette 147 

the idea some of them had formed of it^ so they 
declared that when they visited it the most sumptu- 
ously furnished rooms were closed to them. They 
insisted on being shown an imaginary drawing- 
room which they said had twisted columns deco- 
rated with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. 

Marie Antoinette did her best to be civil to these 
malicious men. She did the honors of Versailles 
with exquisite grace and kindness, talked with them 
about their families and their local interests, but a 
secret instinct told her it was all useless. She fell 
back into her customarj^ anxiety. She felt crushed, 
overwhelmed. She saw the king's indecision in these 
stormy times with alarm. Her position became most 
painful. It was becoming dangerous for the royal 
family and friends to remain in France. The king 
ordered them all to leave. In vain did his brother, 
the Comte d'Artois, who was courage personified, 
beg to stay by the king's side and share his fate. 
The latter would not permit it. So the three sons 
of France and the four princes of the blood, filled 
with many forebodings, took leave of the king 
whom they were never more to see. The queen sent 
also for the Countess Polignac, the Princess Lam- 
ballc, and Madame Campan, and gave them the 
same orders. They, too, protested. Their depart- 
ure seemed to them dishonorable desertion, but by 
midnight all were on the way to the frontier. Only 



148 Royal Women 

one remained. This was Madame Elizabeth, the 
king's sister. There are few figures in history so 
sympathetic. She had known sorrow from her 
cradle, had lost both parents in infancy. Her 
brother, Louis Sixteenth, she fondly loved, and 
every pang he bore was hers also. She refused all 
offers of marriage, telling him that she would rather 
stand at the foot of his throne than to mount to the 
top of any other in Christendom. She met her 
fate with the king and queen, her only crime being 
that she was the king's sister. 

A few years before, when the monarchy was at 
its height, one of the brightest lights at the court 
of Marie Antoinette was the young Marquis de la 
Fayette.* The queen had made him her debtor by 
many kindnesses, but the main-spring of his nature 
was an unbounded love of fame. Although he had 
been honored, and although his birth should have 
attached him to the monarchy and made him the 
most faithful of the king's servants, he forsook his 
sovereigns and took part in forging the chain of 
events calculated to weaken the throne which it 
was his first duty to defend. He liked to try his 

* We look back with gi'ateful remembrance upon the service 
which this man rendered us in our War of Independence, but no 
military career, however brilliant, can disguise the fact that 
although he lent his assistance to us in our distress he aban- 
doned his queen to hers. The one man in France who might 
have saved this queen-mother from the terrors of the guillotine 
was this seeker after fame in foreign lands — the Marquis de la 
Fayette. 



Marie Antoinette 149 

power — to formulate a riot one day and quell it 
the next. But there came a day when he was no 
longer able to stem the tide and it bore him down 
the stream. 

Fear of personal danger was not one of King 
Louis' weaknesses. In proof of this he left Ver- 
sailles and entered Paris alone, with a courage 
equaled only by his honesty of purpose. But affairs 
had reached such a pitch in France that naught but 
a miracle could have resisted the wave which threat- 
ened to inundate the land. Finally there came 
that terrible sixth of October — the half-drunken 
women running about the streets crying that there 
was no bread, a crowd of idlers, beggars, and 
thieves, singing and shouting jests and threats of 
violence and vengeance. At last they took up the 
cry, "On to Versailles!" and the march was begun. 

When they arrived a guard asked the king if 
he had any orders for repelling the attack. 
"What!" said the good-natured king, "fight 
women.? Surely you are jesting!" Toward night 
a storm of rain fell and dispersed the rioters and 
the royal family retired. Everything was at rest — 
except crime. There was no sleep for the furies 
who had sworn that the queen should die. At five 
o'clock in the morning the rabble broke into the 
palace. They killed the first guard who called to 
the second, who passed the alarm along. The last 



150 Boyal Women 

one broke open the door to the queen's room and 
cried, " Save the queen, save the queen — they have 
come to kill her! We will die — but save the 
queen ! " 

The queen's ladies hurried her to the other end 
of the room where there was a secret stairway lead- 
ing to the apartments of the king. He, filled with 
anxiety for her, had taken the other passage and 
reached her room after she had left it. He returned 
immediately to find her safe in his own apartments 
with the royal children, and the National Guard 
then entered the palace and restored order for that 
night. But on the next day, the king and queen 
were driven to Paris, and the heads of the faithful 
guards who had died for them were carried before 
them on pikes. The rabble jeered and shouted that 
there would be no more hunger in Paris! They 
were bringing the Baker and the Baker's Wife and 
the Baker's Little Boy ! 

Thus did Louis Sixteenth and his queen depart 
from Versailles. They were vanquished. Never- 
more would the Revolution allow them to return. 
Well they knew that they had taken their last 
look at that magnificent palace. The shaded walks, 
the fountains, the beautiful galleries, the little 
chapel where the royal family of France had 
prayed for peace, the park, the statues, the mighty 
trees — all would soon become a memory. Upon 



Marie Antoinette 151 

this funeral procession of royalty a gorgeous sun- 
set shone as if in mockery. The autumn glowed 
with its last splendor. The birds still sang in the 
woods, but authority, discipline, honor — every- 
thing that makes for a nation's power and glory 
had been insulted in the person of the king and 
queen. What a large volume of the history of 
France is written in the palace of Versailles ! There 
the dead have voices and the stones a language. 
They whisper of the bitter emptiness of glory, the 
torments of ambition, the disappointments of van- 
ity, the hollowness of greatness. Where are the 
thrones, the crowns, the ashes, even, of those who 
reigned within its walls .? 

When the king and queen reached Paris they 
were lodged in the Tuileries.* It was not without 
sadness that they entered. How sombre it seemed 
in comparison to the beauty of Versailles! This 
edifice, which events had stamped with a character 
of profound sadness, was gloomy and out of repair. 
Its tapestries were faded, its arches damaged by the 
weather, yet even in its dilapidated condition it told 
a story of things once beautiful and brilliant. Now 
they were mouldy with decay. The presence of the 
king, however, quelled the stonn. It grew^ quiet. 
The Princess Lamballe rejoined the queen, who 

* This historic pile is now no more. What the revolutionists 
spared in 1789 the communists in 1871 had no mercy for. Only 
a few years ago the last of its debris was removed. 



152 Boyal Women 

remained in her own apartments supervising the 
education of her children. One of her suite said 
to her one da^^ : 

"Your Majesty is a prisoner." 

" What are you saying to me ? " she cried. 

"It is true, Your Majesty. From the moment 
you ceased to have a guard of honor, you became 
a prisoner. You take precaution now to see that 
no one is hstening at the door. Would you have 
done that with your guards ^ " 

The queen burst into tears. It was true. She 
knew^ it. The royal family were prisoners. Those 
who loved the queen, even the king himself, urged 
her to take her children and flee in disguise while 
yet there was time. Scornfully and with indigna- 
tion she refused. She declared her intention of 
remaining at her post of duty and danger and of 
dying at the king's feet. 

One day, hearing threatening cries in the street, 
she stepped out on a balcony holding her children 
by the hand. The picture of her as she stood thus, 
should have disarmed the most ferocious hatred. 
But the Revolution was without pity. Neither 
motherhood nor childhood could affect it. The very 
next day the Assembly deprived the king of his 
power of pardoning, and this completed his humilia- 
tion. "They have taken away my liberty," he 
said. " Now they forbid me to be merciful." 



Marie Antoinette 153 

Finally, at the earnest counsel of his friends, 
the king himself determined on flight. But how? 
How could he quit the palace and the city without 
being recognized? Six hundred guards were on 
duty at the Tuileries — two mounted sentries posted 
always before the outer doors. Sentinels every- 
where, inside and out. In addition to the guards, 
there were the servants, still more dangerous. 
Almost every one was a spy. Escape seemed impos- 
sible. But captives are ingenious. The queen dis- 
covered an unused door in her apartments hidden 
by a large piece of furniture. Here was a means 
of leaving the palace at least. Painfully they com- 
pleted their preparations. The Baroness de Korff, 
a noble Russian lady, was about to depart from 
France with her two children, and had applied to 
the Minister of Foreign Affairs for passports. 
Learning this, the queen sent a trusted messenger 
to her who explained the terrible straits of the royal 
family. The Baroness gave him her passports for 
use in escape and thus destroyed her chance of 
returning to her own country. 

The twentieth of June was the day set for the 
departure and the flight was to take place at mid- 
night. What a day of anxiety it was! The 
servants whispered to each other. La Fayette took 
up his abode in the palace and doubled the guards 
in all directions. The queen was in despair, but 



154 Royal Women 

the king knew that if they could only keep them 
from suspecting anything the}^ could get avvay. At 
last the day passed. Evening came. The king and 
queen received the usual visitors. The ordinary 
order of the day had been scrupulously observed. 
Orders were given the servants for the next day. 
The doors were closed and locked. Everybody went 
to bed. A few moments later, however, the royal 
family was up again. The large number of people 
employed at the palace who went home at night 
made escape a little less difficult. They did not all 
leave at once. The children with their governess 
went first. A few moments later, the king and 
queen followed, then Madame Elizabeth, the king's 
sister. The Dauphin was dressed as a little girl. 
The king arrayed himself as the steward of the 
Baroness de KorfF. The queen wore a plain, brown 
dress and a small hat with a veil. They took sepa- 
rate paths to the spot where the carriage was to 
meet them. The queen lost her way in that vast 
space which separated the Tuileries from the Louvre 
and while seeking the path was passed by La Fay- 
ette and the guards on the round of inspection. At 
last she found her way to the carriage where all 
waited in great anxiety. "Drive fast!" was the 
order, and the journey which was to end so disas- 
trously began welL 

When they reached the rendezvous where the 



Marie Antoinette 155 

troops were to meet them, however, they met a 
pamful surprise. They were not there. The son 
of the station master, young Drouet, recognized the 
king, followed the carriage on horseback, and de- 
nounced him. When the party reached Varennes 
someone cried " Halt ! Show your passport ! " The 
latter proved all right, but the rumor had gotten 
about that the carriage contained the king. He 
was detained. The whole town surrounded the 
little party. They were taken to the city hall. 
Louis did not admit that he was the king, but 
finally, when she could endure it no longer, the 
queen cried out, "Very well, then. If he is the 
king, respect him!" Then they were definitely 
arrested and the journey was begun back to Paris 
— that city of affliction, of supreme humiliation. 
That journey back to Paris! On the road to 
anguish and humiliation, this once-splendid queen, 
shut up with her family in a close carriage which 
moved slowly, like a hearse, calumniated, threat- 
ened, insulted, dressed in the modest gown of a 
governess, her eyes wet with tears, her hair turned 
white from grief, thought, as always, of the others 
first. As they passed along, the rabble climbed 
upon the carriage steps and hurled vile epithets in 
her face. She said with gentle dignity: 

" For pity's sake, friends, give us air. My little 
children are choking ! " 



156 Royal Women 

" Bah ! " replied one of the furies, " we will soon 
choke you in another fashion ! " 

The journey came to an end at last. They en- 
tered Paris and the Tuileries. There was something 
deadly in the very air. They heard threatening 
voices from every tree and stone. Catherine di 
Medlcis was right when she declared that the 
Tuileries was a residence foreordained to calami- 
ties. Once more the heir to Saint Louis was in his 
prison. He was no longer a king. He was a 
hostage. One day he closed his door. The guard 
reopened it. Angered, the king said, "Do you 
recognize me, sir?" 

" Yes, Sire," replied the guard. The king again 
closed the door. The guard instantly reopened It, 
and said: 

" If Your Majesty closes the door. Your Majesty 
will give 3'ourself a useless trouble, for I shall open 
it each time." 

Then the press became insane. It dipped its pen 
in filth and vitriol before the time came to dip It In . 
blood. Its language was that of the fish-market, 
the cross-roads, and the kennels. Nothing pleased 
unless It was clothed In obscene speech, mean and 
cruel jests. Finally the rabble Invaded the 
Tuileries. After four hours at the Assembly, hours 
of peril and sorrow during which the king had even 
put on the red bonnet of the Revolution in his 



Marie Antoinette 157 

endeavor to keep the peace, he returned to the 
palace, not knowing what had become of his wife 
and children. Below in the streets he heard the 
cries of the bloodthirsty crowd. They were 
shouting : 

" Where is the Austrian w oman ? Throw us down 
her head!" 

In the hour of all this calamity, a slender, pale 
young man stood looking down from an upper ter- 
race upon this unruly horde. He comprehended in 
some manner the long suffering of King Louis. 
His eyes flashed and he said to a companion in 
indignation : 

" How dared they ever let that rabble get so near 
the king ! I should have turned the cannon on them 
and swept four or five hundred of them away. You 
would soon have seen the rest run ! " 

This man, obscure and hidden in the crowd, poor 
and unknown, standing opposite that palace where 
later he was to play so great a part — who was he ? 
Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican. 

On the tenth of August came the demand for 
the royal family to appear before the Assembly. 
Ostensibly it was for the purpose of protecting 
them. In reality it was but to blaze a pathway to 
the scaffold. The queen was averse to going, but 
was unwilling to forsake the king. When she 
looked into those sinister faces, stamped with bitter 



158 Royal Women 

hatred toward herself and hers, did she remember 
her august mother, Maria Theresa, when she 
appeared before the Diet of Presburg with the 
infant Joseph in her arms and was greeted with the 
ringing cheers and wild enthusiasm of the nobles, 
who cried: Moriamur pro rege nostro? Yes, she 
did, and the comparison was bitter. In their 
absence the frenzied populace broke into the pal- 
ace and fell upon the guards. They set fire to the 
former and murdered the latter. The Swiss 
Guards* fought desperately in behalf of the king, 
but w^ere overwhelmed and killed. 

From the Assembly to the Temple, thence to the 
Conciergerie and the scaif old — it were not long to 
tell the story to the end. First came the order 
which deprived the king of his sword. Next, that 
which stripped him of all his orders and decorations 
of knighthood. At last it was determined to bring 
him to trial. 

The king knew that his crown was lost, but its 
loss was less to him than was the silent suffering 
of his wife and the fate which he had no reason to 



* The Swiss Republic has honored the memory of these sons 
of hers who fell at their post. In the side of a rock at the 
entrance of Lucerne a grotto has been hollowed out, and Thor- 
waldsen, the Danish sculptor, has carved in it a colossal stone 
lion. Struck by a lance, the lion has lain down to die, but he 
still holds tight within his paws the royal escutcheon on a shield 
adorned with fleur-de-lis. Underneath are engraved the names of 
the officers and soldiers who died August tenth, and the simple 
inscription reads : 

To THE Fidelity and Courage of the Swiss 



Marie Antoinette 159 

doubt v/ould be hers. During those last few days 
together he lavished on her all the tenderness of 
which his gentle nature was capable, and sought to 
spare her all he could. One day, attracted to the 
window by ferocious cries below, he saw a sight 
which maddened him. He ran from the apartments 
which he had been forbidden to leave, knocked down 
the guard who would have stopped him, threw his 
weight against the door of the queen's room and 
broke it open. She looked up in surprise. He saw 
that she had not seen, and gathering her in his arms, 
he carried her to his own apartment, begging her 
not to look down into the street. It was all in 
vain. The fiends were not to be thwarted. They 
entered the Temple and filled the corridors with 
their cries. At last they found her with the king. 
He put his hands over her eyes, but it was too late. 
She had already seen that the leader carried a pike, 
and on it, her glorious hair, four feet in length, 
falling around it, Marie Antoinette saw the head 
of her beloved friend, the Princess Lamballe. She 
fell into such violent convulsions that they thought 
she would die, and the leader roughly ordered them 
all to disperse, saying : 

"We don't want her to die a natural death!" 

A few days before, the princess had been called 

before the Tribunal as hundreds of others had been. 

In accordance with their methods they had asked 



160 Royal Women 

her a few perfunctory questions, and then said, 
" Libre! " (free). She turned to go, but instead of 
taking her back by the same door through which 
she had come, they threw open another and led 
her out into a courtyard filled with headless, muti- 
lated, putrefying bodies. The princess fainted, and 
as she fell the guard struck her a blow in the back 
of the head with a halberd, rendering her uncon- 
scious. Then, with inconceivable brutality, they 
cut off her head and dragged her nude body 
through the streets of Paris till not a vestige of it 
remained. Her father, the Due de Penthievre, 
offered a million francs to anyone who would return 
the body to him, proving it was hers, but no trace 
of it was ever found. 

Previous to this episode the king and queen had 
been allowed to see each other at certain hours of 
the day. Now they were separated entirely, and 
another example of the king's fortitude and unsel- 
fishness was made manifest. Lest his innocent chil- 
dren should prove messengers between them, they 
were ordered to remain with either the one or the 
other. Knowing how their mother would suffer, 
sorely as he longed for the comfort of their pres- 
ence himself, the king told the guard to take them 
to her and accepted the decree of the Council in all 
its pitiless cruelty. 

Then came the end for him — the mockery of the 



Marie Antoinette 161 

trial of a king before a Tribunal composed of car- 
penters, tailors, loafers, idlers, the scum of all Paris, 
Then the sentence. The queen was kept in 
ignorance, although she had no doubt what the 
result would be. The king was roused from his 
bed to hear it and was told that it was to be carried 
out the next day. 

The only mercy shown them was permission to 
say good-by alone. The guards closed the glass 
doors, through which they could see but could not 
hear. The king was calm, but the queen's mute 
suffering broke his heart. She clung to him in 
speechless agony, asking only that she might see 
him again the next morning. He promised her it 
should be so, but after she was gone he determined 
for both their sakes not to see her again. So in 
the morning while she waited, cries in the street 
told her that all was over. She sent for the guard 
who had stood in front of the king's door, and 
although he knew he was disobeying orders and 
what the result might be, he was so moved by her 
distress that he gave her the message the king had 
begged him to convey. 

"Tell my wife," he said, "how hard it was not 
to see her again. Give her these, if you find it 
possible, and bear to her my last farewell." 

He dared not, at that time, give her the little 
package which the king had entrusted to him, but 



162 Royal Women 

a few days later managed to do so. It contained 
a lock of her hair which the king had carried in his 
watch, his seal for his son, and the ring which the 
little Archduchess of Austria had given the Dauphin 
of France on the day of their w^edding, nearly 
twenty years before. 

Louis Sixteenth died like a Christian king. They 
advanced to bind his hands and he started back 
in astonishment. But the old priest who accom- 
panied him said: 

" Sire, this is the last indignit}^ Remember that 
the Saviour submitted to be bound." 

It was in the king's heart to ask that howling 
mob to be content with his death — to let him pay 
all and spare his wife and children. But when he 
tried to speak, the officer in charge ordered the 
guard to beat the drum that his voice might not be 
heard. Only one man had the courage to speak. 
This was the gray, old priest. In the silence which 
fell as the ax descended, he cried aloud : 

" Ascend to heaven, son of Saint Louis ! " 

The furies in the shape of women who sat, day 
after day, at the foot of the guillotine with their 
knitting in order to see the heads fall, the fiends 
who had hastened the king's execution in fear that 
the nation at large would make an attempt to rescue 
him, for the moment were awed into silence. 

While the king lived there had been a feeling 




Louis Sixteenth before the bar of the convention 




I.ouis Sixteenth on tlie scaffold 



Marie Antoinette 163 

that the queen had a protector. Moreover, her 
brother, the Emperor of Austria, had stood behmd 
her. Now both were dead, and the page which 
ends this sad, eventful history was about to be 
turned. One night, she and the Princess Elizabeth 
sat mending their clothing by the light of a candle. 
The door was thrown rudely open, and six burly 
men entered, saying that they had come for the 
Dauphin who was to be placed under the care of a 
tutor. Marat had recommended Simon, the cob- 
bler, whose savageness of disposition was well 
known, and at this unexpected calamity the queen's 
fortitude gave way. On her knees she begged them 
not to take away her child, but the ruffians were 
not likely to feel or to show pity. They abused and 
threatened her. She begged them to kill her and 
be satisfied. They replied that they would kill the 
boy before her eyes if she made further resistance. 
At this awful alternative she woke the lad and 
dressed him and spoke to him the last words he was 
to hear from his mother's lips. Unconsciousness 
came mercifully to her relief. She heard not the 
insults nor the cruel laughter as they bore away 
the boy, and if it were not mockery to speak the 
word, one might say that she was blest in that she 
knew not Simon's instructions concerning him. He 
was to get rid of him, and he carried out the instruc- 
tions to the letter. He practiced upon him the 



164 Royal Women 

most revolting and unremitting cruelties. He 
reviled and beat him. He taught and made him 
sing songs which contained the most grossly vulgar 
allusions to his father and mother. He made him 
drink brandy till he was thoroughly drunk. He 
dressed him in revolutionary clothes and always con- 
trived that his mother should catch a glimpse of 
him in this guise. He taught him everything that 
was impious and loathsome and ruined him body 
and mind. He was not taken so far away from his 
mother that she could not hear his childish voice, 
and on that morning when she was removed from 
the Temple to the last stopping-place on her jour- 
ney, the Conciergerie, she exclaimed from a full 
heart, "Thank God, I can no longer hear him 
sing ! " 

For six weeks she remained in this prison, not 
from any feeling of compunction or pity, but 
because of the absolute impossibility of inventing 
an accusation against her which was not so absurd 
and groundless as to die a natural death if pre- 
sented. But eagerness for her execution overcame 
all scruples. She was brought to trial. They 
accused her of trying to overthrow the republic 
and reestablish the throne, of having exerted her 
influence over her husband in such a manner as to 
make him unjust to the people, and in the perora- 
tion the prosecutor likened her to all the wickedest 



Marie Antoinette 165 

women of whom history, ancient or modern, has 
preserved any record. 

Had she been guided by her own feehngs she 
would have scorned to make answer. But the 
mother was strong in her, and while she lived she 
would not renounce the hope of seeing her children 
again, and perhaps some unforeseen chance might 
yet restore her to freedom and her son to the 
throne of France. So she resolved to stand trial 
and to make one last desperate effort to establish 
her right to acquittal and deliverance. 

As was the case with the king, the jury was 
picked from the dregs of the people. There were 
blacksmiths, policemen, men of no calling. They 
called for the Widow Capet. The prosecutor called 
witness after witness. To his surprise, all testified 
in her favor. Then her little son was brought in. 
Not until she learned that he had already been inter- 
rogated and that when his answers did not suit 
them he had been made to drink brandy and sign 
papers accusing his mother did her equanimity 
give way. Before such a court it mattered little 
what was proved or disproved. After midnight, on 
the second day, the verdict was rendered. The sen- 
tence was death and it was to be carried out without 
delay. She heard it with no perceptible change of 
countenance and without betraying the slightest 
emotion. 



166 Royal Women 

That last grim night in prison ! No sleep came 
to her relief. She lay on her cot with wide-open 
eyes, awaiting the breaking of the morn.* At seven 
o'clock she was ready. The streets were already 
thronged with people. She shuddered when she saw 
the cart before the door. The king had been per- 
mitted to depart in a carriage. Not so she. The 
criminal's cart, the seat a bare plank, was hers. 
Every now and then they halted the procession that 
the crowd might gaze at her. She saw and heard 
not. She said the prayers for the dying as the 
cart rattled over the stony streets. Finally she 
stood on the scaffold, and in that last hour the 
House of Austria had no cause to be ashamed of 
her daughter. 

Whatever of frivolity there had been in Marie 
Antoinette's girlhood, it had long since given way 
to that heroism which the scourge of sorrow always 
lashes from the soul of womanhood. Hardly 



* The painting of the last night in prison is from the brush of 
M. Toni Robert Fleury, son of the president of the French 
Academy. It was exhibited with great success at the Salon a 
few years ago, and is thought to excel all former efforts of the 
artists to portray the last hours of the condemned. One can 
almost feel the tenseness of the queen's nerves as she lies there 
looking out into space, waiting for the night to pass. On the cot 
is her will, the one which Robespierre confiscated. The faithful 
little maid stands by the bed. In the morning, by the guard's 
orders, she takes off her kerchief and puts it on the queen in 
order that she may not appear before the people dressed in black. 
Behind the screen, with his pipe and his bottle, the guard yawns 
and evidently looks forward to the end of his vigil with relief. 
The detail of the picture could not be surpassed, nor the treat- 
ment of the subject as a whole. 




The niglit before the execution 




]\Iarie Antoinette in the cart 



Marie Antoinette 167 

beyond childhood when her duties fell upon her, she 
showed herself equal to the vicissitudes of fortune 
and superior to its frowns. She had borne her 
accumulated griefs as became the daughter of the 
Caesars. She never forgot that she was the wife 
of the son of sixty kings, the Queen of France and 
Navarre. Where are they now who accused her 
of extravagance .f* Let them laugh and hug them- 
selves with glee while they read from the record of 
the Tribunal this last item of expense: "A coffin 
for Louis' widow — twenty francs!" 

When the ax had fallen, the queen's body was 
thrown into the common ditch and covered with 
quick-lime to insure its utter destruction. The 
silence was terrifying. She had perished by a death 
fit for only the vilest criminals, and already France 
was beginning to ask herself what she had gained. 
Later the French people attempted to make repara- 
tion. Twenty years went by. Then the remains of 
the king and queen were exhumed and placed in the 
tomb of the Bourbons. To their memory, also, 
there has been erected a little chapel which they 
rightly call the Chapelle Expiatoire, 

From out the depths of her degradation France 
arose at last. The Consulate and the Empire shone 
forth for a while and vanished. Royalty returned 
for a brief space to its accustomed haunts. Today 
the flag of the French Republic flies over all the 



168 Boyal Women 

land. The sun shines bright on la belle France, 
and the grass has grown green over the graves of 
them that died for her in the days of her sorrow 
and her shame. 




IV 
THE EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH 

Josephine 





4 



Josephine 



IV 

THE EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH 

Josephine 

ANY attempt to tell the story of Josephine 
apart from that of Napoleon would resem- 
ble an effort to produce Shakespeare's 
Hamlet with the melancholy Dane left out. The 
Emperor undoubtedly dominated the history of his 
century. So powerful was his personality that the 
Empress shone in a reflected light. Yet the story 
of Josephine is written for all time. It is woven 
into Napoleon's brilliant career, and the remem- 
brance of her is like a bit of old tapestry, the 
colors of which grow softer as the years go by. 
All the world knows the story of the Corsican. 
From the snow-wrapped plains of Russia to the 
delta of the Nile the bleeding footprints of the 
Grande Armee have written it upon the soil. It 
is painted on the gigantic canvas of European 
history in colors that do not fade. Victor Hugo 
has immortalized it with his pen. The Consul, 
the General, the Emperor, the Conqueror, the 
Mapmaker of Europe — this picture of Napoleon 
171 



172 Boyal Women 

we have always with us. A brilHancy unparalleled 
in history illumines the public career of the man 
who shot like a meteor across the skies of Europe 
and sank into the sea at St. Helena. But there is 
a side to this man's story which the artist has not 
idealized nor the poet sung. Not until we lose our 
interest in what is human will the name Napoleon 
cease to fascinate. 

In the blue waters of the Mediterranean lies the 
first of those four islands which played so strange 
a part in Napoleon's life. Corsica was the cradle 
of the Bonapartes. In the little town of Ajaccio 
his ancestors had settled early in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and here on the ninth of August, 1769, the 
future First Emperor of the French was born. 

The Bonaparte family was undoubtedly noble. 
This fact has never been questioned, although its 
exact origin has been the subject of much 
conjecture.* 

In order to understand Napoleon as a man one 
should know him as a boy. In that far-off English 

* There is a story to the effect that the celebrated Man in the 
Iron Mask, that historical human enigma which puzzled all 
Europe in the seventeenth century, was a twin brother of Louis 
Fourteenth, who was hustled out of sight and into prison as 
soon as he was born, by the emissaries of Cardinal Mazarin. 
This child is commonly supposed to have died in prison, but this, 
It is claimed, is an error. He grew up, married the daughter 
of the jailor, and had a son. The latter was sent into Corsica 
with a trusted servant who had written orders to bring up the 
child well, as he came of good stock, expressed in Italian by 
the words buona parte, the exact Italian spelling of the Bona- 
parte name. The author of the story claims that it was from 



Josephine 173 

island where he spent the twihght of his Hfe, with 
Memory for his closest friend, he seemed often to 
look back, far beyond the days of the Consulate and 
the Empire, to that turbulent, poverty-haunted 
childhood in Corsica. His father, Charles Maria 
Buonaparte, was a man of no force of character. It 
was not from him that his son inherited any of 
his remarkable traits. But in 1765 he had married 
a peasant girl, the little beauty of the island — 
Laetitia Ramolino. He gave her naught but his 
noble name, but the young bride brought him health 
and beauty and character. Although only fifteen 
years old at the time of her marriage, she was 
possessed of energy and will, of good sense and 
firmness, and she reared with credit the eight chil- 
dren who lived out of the thirteen she bore. 
Madame Bonaparte's face has been preserved in a 
hundred forms of art and one has but to glance at 
it to see the origin of the Napoleonic profile with 
which the world will be familiar to the end of human 
annals. 

this child that Napoleon was descended and that he had, there- 
fore, as much right to occupy the throne of France as anyone, 
the story is interesting, but a little too wide of the mark to be 
believed. Napoleon himself always expressed a lively regret that 
he could not find out who the Man in the Iron Mask was, and to 
believe the story is to accept the fact that it nullifies in the 
most absolute fashion the legitimacy of the remaining Bourbons. 
However all this may be, long years afterward, when the pro- 
posed marriage between Napoleon and Marie Louise was under 
consideration, the Emperor of Austria said, " I would not consider 
the proposition for a moment if I were not convinced that his 
family is as old and as good as my own." 



174 Royal Women 

Laetitia Ramolino was only nineteen years old 
when her war god was born. Her little brood had 
increased rapidly and they were at the door of 
penury. Corsica had been drained to the dregs by 
Paoli's wars. The young mother, plucky and 
courageous though she was, had little time to give 
to her children's training. Their father gave them 
none. Once in his later years, speaking of his 
mother, Napoleon said : " She was a superb 
woman — a woman of ability and courage. No 
hardships shook her equanimity and she endured 
many, among them hunger and cold in my early 
days. My country was perishing when I was born. 
Thirty thousand Frenchmen had been vomited upon 
our soil. Cries of the wounded, sighs of the 
oppressed and tears of the dying surrounded my 
cradle at my birth. Almost up until the day I was 
born my mother tramped after the army which was 
contending against France in Corsica. The French 
Generals took pity on her and told her to go home, 
promising her safety and protection. They kept 
their word. On the cupola of the old house at 
Ajaccio they ran up the French flag. That is why 
I am French — not Italian. I was born under the 
flag." 

This little lad who, according to his own state- 
ment, never feared anything in his life, spent his 
childhood up to his ninth year running wild on the 



Josephine 175 

beach with the sailors and on the hills with the shep- 
herds. He Hstened to their tales of Corsican strug- 
gles. He imbibed their love of liberty. Was it 
any wonder that, born of such a mother and sur- 
rounded by such influences at the most impression- 
able period of life, he should love freedom and hate 
with the fierceness peculiar to the Corsican nature 
the idea of submission? Take, then, this character 
with its early training and multiply it by ambition. 
The product will be The Conqueror. 

The only thing worth recording which Bona- 
parte, the father, ever did was to beg free educa- 
tion for his children. When Napoleon was nine 
years old he was sent to the military school at 
Brienne. He was very unhappy here. The school 
was composed of the sons of French noblemen, and 
he felt intensely the fact that he was a charity 
pupil. The French lads made fun of him and he 
made few friends — only one, in fact, to whom he 
clung in after life. This was Bourienne, who was 
his secretary under the Empire. It is to Bourienne 
that we are indebted for any authentic knowledge 
of this period of Napoleon's life. In his Memoires 
he says: "Nobody understood Bonaparte at this 
time. He was a shy, proud little fellow, and our 
friendship began when he said to me one day, 'I 
like you, Bourienne. You never laugh at me.' His 
teachers said that he was morose and sullen, but 



176 Royal Women 

they were not far-sighted enough to see that it was 
sensitiveness, not arrogance, which drove him to 
shun his companions. I have always thought that 
there was in those days a proud, passionate little 
heart under that sullen exterior, and that it must 
have ached for love and recognition." 

Madame Junot, who also had known Napoleon in 
his youth, says in her Memoires: " As a child Bona- 
parte was anything but prepossessing. His head 
appeared too large for his body — a fault common 
to the Bonaparte children. His bearing was morose, 
almost sullen. In after years the peculiar charm 
of his countenance lay in the expression of his 
eyes and his captivating smile. But that forehead 
♦vhich seemed formed to bear the crowns of the whole 
world; those hands of which the most coquettish 
woman might have been vain and whose white skin 
covered muscles of steel; in short, of all that per- 
sonal beauty which so distinguished Napoleon as a 
young man, no trace was discernible in the boy. 
Of all the children of IMadame Bonaparte, the Em- 
peror was the one from whom the future greatness 
was least to be prognosticated." 

From Brienne Napoleon went to the military 
school at Paris. Here life were even more hateful 
than before. The rich lads spent freely. The 
poor ran greatly in debt. Bonaparte would do 
neither. Nor would he borrow. But it was hard 



Josephine 177 

not to be able to join in the frolics of his compan- 
ions or to contribute toward the lunches and gifts 
they gave to their teachers and friends. His sister 
Eliza had been placed in Madame de Maintenon's 
school at St. Cyr. He went one day to see her and 
found her weeping over the same thing which dis- 
tressed him. He tried in his rough way to com- 
fort her, but said positively : " My mother has 
already too many expenses. I have no business to 
increase them nor must you." 

The school days came to an end at last. 
Napoleon received his commission in the French 
army with a salary of two hundred and twenty-four 
dollars a year! He obtained leave of absence and 
went to Corsica, where his father had recently died. 
His leave extended many months, and while there 
he took part in the revolutionary uprising of 1789. 

It was while Napoleon was a little lad at Brienne 
that he seems to have realized that the future of 
his mother and sisters would depend on him, and 
even at that early age he had shown an interest, 
had felt a sense of responsibility, and had displayed 
good judgment remarkable in one so young. While 
on leave in Corsica he made strenuous efforts to 
better their circumstances. He reestablished the 
salt works. He saw to it that the mulberry planta- 
tion was replanted. He secured for Lucien a 
scholarship at Aix and for Louis a place at UEcole 



178 Royal Women 

Militaire in Paris. He became so absorbed in the 
affairs of his family that he quite forgot his own. 
He overstayed his leave. When he got back to 
Paris he found himself dismissed from the service, 
and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he 
succeeded in getting himself reinstated. He rose 
rapidly in the Army and during those last dreadful 
days of royalty in France was placed at the head 
of the forces stationed to protect the Tuileries dur- 
ing the sitting of the Convention. This he man- 
aged with consummate skill and was made General 
of the Army of the Interior. 

Mark well the first use Napoleon made of power ! 
He sent sixty thousand francs to his mother, beauti- 
ful dresses to his sisters. He obtained for Joseph 
a Consulship. He made Louis a lieutenant and 
Lucien Commissioner of War. The man whose 
thoughts turn the first time Fortune smiles upon 
him to his mother and sisters must have at least one 
spot in his heart which selfishness and ambition can 
never touch. 

Bonaparte began now to see something of society. 
His official position gave him entree to any salon in 
Paris where he might wish to go. Paris was just 
recovering from the recollection of the Reign of 
Terror. Robespierre was dead. The guillotine had 
received its last victims. The prison doors were 



Josephine 179 

thrown open to those who remained, and among 
these latter was Josephine. 

Josephine was a Creole.* She was the daughter 
of the Sieur de la Pagerie, and it was on the 
second of the four islands connected with Napo- 
leon's Hfe that she was born. The little town of 
St. Pierre, Martinique, was her birthplace. Who 
can forget the tragic fate of this pretty spot? 
No disaster was ever more complete than that which 
destroyed it. No living soul of its thousands 
remained to tell the tale. The low, rambling, one- 
story house with its tall chimney, which was the 
home of Josephine's childhood, had withstood the 
tropical storms and the earthquakes for many 
years, but was not proof against the fiery blast of 
Mt. Pelee. Not a stick nor a stone remains. 

Josephine's girlhood was uneventful save for 
one thing. One day, with three or four of her 



*A mistaken impression seems to exist about this word Creole. 
For some reason, many have accepted as its meaning a mixture 
of foreign with negro blood. This is entirely wrong. A Creole 
is anyone born of European parentage in the West Indies, or in 
the French or Spanish provinces elsewhere. Perhaps the fact 
that in our country these provinces lay along the Gulf of Mexico 
made Americans especially accept the erroneous meaning. Far 
from being a term of contempt, it implies a certain excellence 
of origin, and means that the person so descended has never 
mixed with any other race. She was of purely French extrac- 
tion, this little Creole maid whose name was destined to be writ 
in history, not only on account of her many qualities, not alone 
because of her glory as Empress of the French, but also because 
of her sorrows and suffering when the days of her splendor were 
past. 



180 Royal Women 

companions, she ran away from school, and while 
walking through the gardens they came upon an 
old negress who wished to tell their fortunes. 
Josephine was the last to give her hand, and the 
negress had no sooner glanced at it than she threw 
herself at the young girl's feet and said, "Made- 
moiselle, you will be greater than a queen!" 
Josephine laughed at the time, but she never forgot 
the woman's prophecy, which she lived to see 
fulfilled. 

When she was seventeen years old, Josephine 
was married to the Viscount Alexandre Beau- 
harnais. It is said that when he asked her to be 
his wife she laughed and said : " How can I ? I am 
going to be greater than a queen ! " Nevertheless 
the marriage took place and two children were 
born to them. The older was a son, Eugene, who 
grew to be a fine young fellow. The daughter 
was Hortense, afterward Queen of Holland. Napo- 
leon adopted these children and was very fond of 
them, and after that disastrous Russian campaign, 
he declared that Eugene was the only man on his 
staff who had not committed a terrible blunder of 
some kind during the war. 

The Beauharnais lived quietly in Paris till those 
stormy days which followed the downfall of royalty. 
Then, on account of their loyalty to the king, they 
were thrown into prison and the husband was one 




Josci^hine in voiitli 



Josephine 181 

of the very last victims of the Reign of Terror. 
Only four days before the fall of Robespierre, 
Alexander Beauharnais met his death at the guil- 
lotine. Josephine, suffering all the tortures of 
which a sensitive nature is capable, separated from 
her children, awaited a similar fate in the women's 
wing of the prison. So near execution was she that 
the jailor came and carried away her bed, telling 
her roughly that "she wouldn't need it after 
tomorrow." But the unexpected often happens, 
and in this case it did. When the morrow came, 
she was free — free to return to her children, but a 
widow, without means. 

Meanwhile young Bonaparte was becoming an 
important figure in Paris. The later days of the 
French Revolution were the days of young men. 
He was no younger than his associates, but he was 
a general in the French army at twenty-six. 

One day a young lad presented himself and 
begged of General Bonaparte the return of his 
father's sword which had been taken from him at 
the time of his imprisonment. The boy's request 
was readily granted. The General himself placed 
the sword in his hands, when, much to his surprise, 
the little fellow burst into tears and kissed it. 
Bonaparte was touched at his emotion, and made 
inquiry as to his family and their circumstances. 
The next day the boy's mother called upon him to 



182 Royal Women 

express her thanks for the kindly reception he had 
given her son, and on this occasion Napoleon 
caught his first glimpse of her who, according to 
his own statement, was, "of all the women I have 
ever known, the one who charmed me most and 
whom I most fondly loved." How can anyone 
who has read the Emperor's words spoken during 
his last unhappy days persuade himself that he 
ever felt for another woman the affection, the 
tenderness which, undoubtedly, he held for Jose- 
phine? One of his companions who shared his 
exile says : " He rarely spoke of her, but one day, 
when the spirit of reminiscence was strong within 
him, he said, 'Dear Josephine! She was the most 
charming woman I ever knew. She was absolute 
mistress of the art of pleasing — a trait which so 
few women possess. She was always ready when I 
wanted her. She never annoyed me in her life — 
never besought of me favors for her children. It 
was her sole ambition to be my good angel — and 
she was. I gained the kingdoms, but Josephine 
gained me the hearts. She would have shared my 
exile gladly.'" Is it possible that the Emperor, 
when he spoke these words, could forget that the 
days with Josephine were the days of his greatest 
glory, or that from the day he sent her from him 
his star began to wane? 

Bonaparte was not the man to let the woman 



Josephine 183 

who had so attracted him escape. He sought her 
out, pursued her relentlessly, wooed her madly. 
Josephine had spent her life in the society and 
under the protection of royalty. She could not 
determine whether she ought to wed this rampant 
young republican or not. Indeed, she found it 
quite impossible at this time to return the fier^; 
affection which he lavished upon her. But Bona^ 
parte persisted and the marriage took place. Three 
days later he shouted through the door to her that 
" he was off to Italy. Love would have to wait till 
the campaign was over." Josephine remained in 
Paris, unable to determine whether she had married 
a hero or lunatic. It w^as with Napoleon as it is 
with many others. What was called genius in his 
after years was in his youth only eccentricity. 

The student of Napoleonana finds in the works of 
various authors many expressions of curiosity as to 
the reasons for Napoleon's infatuation for Jose- 
phine. " The beautiful Creole was older than he," 
they argue. " She was past the freshness of her 
youth." True. But why waste time and space 
trying to explain a thing so incapable of explana- 
tion or analysis as affection ? One loves because he 
loves. It is idle to seek the reason. 

Long, wakeful nights on battlefields are con- 
ducive to thoughts of home. Napoleon sent back 
to his wife from the army the most charming love 



184 Boy at Women 

letters. "My only Josephine," he wrote, "away 
from you there is no life, no happiness. I stand 
alone in a world which is a desert. When I am 
worn out with the tumult of events or fear the 
issue — if men disgust me and I am ready to curse 
life, I place my hand on my heart where your 
image lies, and everything smiles." Again he 
wrote : " To live for Josephine ! That is the story 
of my life. How long it will be before you will 
read these words which so feebly express the emo- 
tions of the heart over which you reign!" And 
once more : " The day when I shall have lost your 
love will be the day when the earth has lost its 
flowers and the birds have forgotten their songs. 
Ah, Josephine, let us at least be able to say when 
we die, *so many days we were happy.'" 

The astounding victories of the French in Italy 
made Bonaparte an idol in Paris. Josephine's 
heart warmed toward the man whose fortunes she 
had elected to share, and from that day forth she 
never forsook him. Many are the allusions to the 
infidelity of Josephine — more to the immorality 
of Napoleon; but the motive for the slanders 
against the Empress was too apparent to give them 
weight. They emanated from the Emperor's sis- 
ters, who hated and envied her, and they are not 
substantiated by fact or proof. As for Napoleon 



Josephine 185 

himself — who shall judge him? Let him that is 
without sin cast the first stone ! Was the Emperor 
the only man in history who, after months and 
sometimes years of absence from home, occasionally 
erred? What volumes of stuff have been written 
on this subject ! " Man's love is of his life a thing 
apart," sang Lord Byron — that misguided under- 
stander of human nature. American manhood has 
become with us an ideal. May we not be charitable 
to the French soldier of a century ago? These 
wanderings on Napoleon's part were short-lived, 
apparently but the whim of the moment. They 
were forgotten instantly when the army turned its 
face towards Paris, and Josephine always granted 
him absolution. 

After the overthrow of the Directory the solid 
rebuilding of the Constitution became necessary, 
and Bonaparte was made First Consul. At no 
period of his life did he show such splendid ability 
as during the time he served as First Consul, at no 
time was his greatness so apparent. He undertook 
the reconstruction with courage and determination. 
The Bank of France dates from this time. He 
insisted on the most rigid governmental economy. 
He reorganized the tax system, the principal fea- 
ture of which was that extra taxes should not be 
levied upon the poor. He encouraged agriculture 



186 Royal Women 

and the industries, and Paris began to take on new 
life. Then followed the campaign in Egypt, and 
Bonaparte was made First Consul for life.* » 

Josephine was of inestimable value to Napoleon 
at this time. The very things which would have 
been difficult for a man of his temperament to 
manage came easily and naturally to her. Later, 
when the Consulate became the Empire, Josephine 
stepped into her place with tact and grace. Appar- 
ently without effort, she rivaled in social conquests 
the victory of her husband in the field. High-born 
ladies sought her favor, and nobles bowled low to 
win her support. 

There is a general impression that Josephine 
was shallow", if not ignorant. This is a mistake. 
When she found herself in so exalted a position 
she engaged a man to whom the title Librarian of 
the Court w as given, whose sole duty it w as to keep 

♦ There are many charming pictures of Bonaparte as First 
Consul. He was \gvj difllcult to paint because he would not 
sit for the artist. When David went, at Bonaparte's own 
request, after the battle of Marengo, to make his now famous 
portrait, he asked the First Consul when he would pose for 
him. " Pose ! " thundered Bonaparte. " Do you suppose the 
good men of antiquity posed for their portraits?" 

"But I am painting you for your time, for your countrymen. 
They will wish the picture to be like you." 

"Well," said the Consul, "it is not perfection of feature, nor 
yet a pimple of the nose which makes resemblance. Who cares 
whether the pictures of great men look like them or not? It is 
enough if their genius shines from the picture." 

"No doubt you are right, Citizen Consul," said the artist, 
"but I have never thought of it in that light before." David 
breakfasted daily with Bonaparte thereafter till the portrait was 
finished. It was the only way in which he was able to study 
his face. 




Josephine as Empress 



Josephine 187 

her informed on all questions concerning the politics 
of France. As a result, she was always ready to 
discuss intelligently anything which came up, and 
was well posted on all matters which concerned the 
court.* 

There is a legend that Charlemagne gave orders 
to his servant that every morning when he awakened 
him he should remind him that he was mortal ! Well 
would it have been for Napoleon had someone per- 
formed a similar act for him when first he began to 
dream of the Empire. His days as First Consul 
were undoubtedly his greatest days. France was 
healthy then. A splendid nationalism existed, but 
it disappeared under the glittering pomp in which 
the Empire was enveloped. One cannot but ponder 
on the things which would not have happened had 
Bonaparte died at the end of his career as First 
Consul. But like many another man on whom 
fickle fortune has smiled, he lived a few years too 
long. When he looked back on his own life as 

* Many people who stood in awe of the Emperor sought his 
favor by first approaching Josephine. There is an amusing 
story concerning one of these petitioners. He spoke to the 
Empress about his difficulties and she told him to give her his 
petition in writing. This the young man thought he did, but 
imagine his consternation when he returned home to find tliat he 
had presented her with his tailor's biU! Josephine, of course, 
was deluged with these petitions and often they did not reach 
the Emperor for several days. In her effort to be diplomatic, 
she occasionally got into hot water. In the case mentioned when 
the young man presented himself to make his most abject apolo- 
gies she greeted him with a charming smile, assured him that 
she and Napoleon had read over his petition together, and that 
the success of the affair had made her very happy ! 



188 Royal Women 

Emperor he was filled with haunting memories of 
things which would never have been had he put 
from him the glittering bauble which so allured him. 
During his last days these passed before him in dim 
review — the murder of the Due d'Enghien, the 
war with Spain, the terrible campaign in Russia, 
the exile to Elba, the quarrel with the Holy Father. 
He thought of the seas of blood which had been 
sucked from wounded France, of the flight in 
Austrian uniform, of the foreigners encamped in 
Paris — of Waterloo, of St. Helena! 

After the Empire was established, the other 
members of the Bonaparte family were raised to 
the imperial rank solely on condition that they 
would act strictly in accordance with the Emperor's 
plans. They must marry so as to cement the ties 
of the kingdom. They must arrange their time, 
form their friendships as it best suited the interests 
of the Emperor. They must forget all the ties of 
kindred and conduct themselves as kings and queens, 
to be criticized with absolute frankness if the 
Emperor saw fit. 

The oldest of the Bonaparte daughters was 
Eliza. She was made Princess of Lucques and 
Piombino. Napoleon was very fond of this sister 
because she resembled In every way the Corslcan 
mother, but he quarreled with her about her mar- 
riage to Count BaccioccI, and refused to stand as 



Josephine 189 

godfather to any of her children. Jerome was 
made King of Westphalia after he had yielded to 
Napoleon's demands and set aside the beautiful 
American woman he had married.* 

Pauline was the beauty of the family. In fact, 
she was considered the most beautiful woman of her 
day. She was married first to General Leclerc, 
and after hi? death to Prince Camillo Borghese, the 
richest nobleman in Italy. Pauline was devoted to 
Napoleon. She followed him to Elba and assisted 
him to escape. She was preparing to join him at 
St. Helena, but the Emperor died before she could 
carry out her plans, and after his death she took no 
further interest in mankind. 

Joseph was the oldest of the Bonaparte sons, 
although Napoleon was always looked upon as the 
head of the family. The relations between these 
two were amicable until Joseph protested against 
the sale of Louisiana. Then they quarreled. The 
one member of the family whom the Emperor could 
not manage was Lucien. He steadfastly refused to 
set aside tlie wife he had wed, and all the threats 
and persuasions of the Emperor availed him naught. 
The remaining brother was Louis. He was mar- 
ried to Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine's only 
daughter. The story of these young people is 

* It was from this marriage that Charles J. Bonaparte, for- 
merly Secretary of the U. S. navy, was descended. Jerome Bona- 
parte was his grandfather. 



190 Royal Women 

sorrowful in the extreme. Utterly uncongenial by 
nature, taste, and disposition, absolutely without 
affection for each other, each in love with someone 
else, they had yielded to the entreaty of Napoleon 
and Josephine and consented to the marriage. The 
Emperor urged it because of a genuine affection 
for both and a desire to make them king and queen 
of Holland. The Empress urged it because she 
foresaw that the child of her own daughter and 
Napoleon's favorite brother would be a most impor- 
tant personage so far as the succession was con- 
cerned. The marriage was most unhappy. Louis, 
who in his youth was unusually sweet-tempered and 
charming, under adverse circumstances became not 
only disagreeable and contemptible, but tyrannical 
and cruel. Napoleon had resolved to make the son 
of Louis and Hortense his heir; but the little 
prince in whom such hopes were centered died sud- 
denly one night of croup, and sorrow began to 
wrap its shadows about the childless Josephine. 

The men of the Bonaparte family were not so 
bad, but the Emperor's sisters can never be any- 
thing but contemptible in history because of their 
everlasting quarrels and bickerings among them- 
selves.* They could not bear to witness the honors 

* There are many humorous anecdotes related of Napoleon's 
frequent exasperation with his sisters In this respect. On one 
occasion Eliza, who, though older than Caroline, was lower in 
rank, asked permission of the Emperor to absent herself from 
the state dinner which was to be followed by an evening at the 



Josephine 191 

which their brother heaped upon Josephine. They 
plotted and planned against her. They spied upon 
her. They misconstrued her slightest actions and 
carried exaggerated reports to the Emperor. Their 
daily lives were one continuous attempt to poison 
his mind against her. Josephine never made the 
slightest attempt to conciliate them, and when the 
Empire became an assured thing and the time 
approached for the coronation, the Bonapartes, 
both male and female, brought all the pressure 
they could summon to bear upon Napoleon in the 
attempt to prevent the coronation of Josephine. 
But the Emperor was adamant. No argument they 
could use moved him. Finally one day his patience 
slipped the tether and he roughly ordered them all 
to be silent. He went so far as to say sneeringly 
to one of his sisters, " One would think that we had 
inherited this kingdom from the late king, our 
father! " 

Shortly after their marriage. Napoleon pur- 
chased for Josephine a little estate not far from 
Paris, called Malmaison. Here as the wife of the 

opera. Napoleon inquired her reason. She hesitated a little, and 
Caroline (who was Queen of Naples) broke forth: "Oh, I can 
tell you why. Your Majesty, She does not choose to enter the 
imperial dining-room after me. It does not suit her Highness to 
sit in the royal box hehind me ! etc., etc." One can imagine the 
result. In shorter time than it takes to tell it, the two sisters 
were quarrelling furiously and history hath it that the Emperor 
seized the fire tongs and shovel and chased the two irate prin- 
cesses down the long corridor to their apartments, banging the 
door behind them in true Corsican style. 



192 Royal Women 

First Consul she spent her happiest days. Mal- 
maison was to Josephine what Petit Trianon was 
to Marie Antoinette. Here they laid aside their 
dignity and courtly demeanor and laughed and 
sang like happy children. Here in the summer days 
they played " prisoner's base " and took long walks 
and drives through the park. There was one little 
avenue, now called the Emperor's Walk, where 
Napoleon, when he was wearied of the gaiety, 
wandered up and down, a solitary dreamer. Who 
can say what thoughts were his ! 

As the time approached for the coronation, 
Josephine awoke to a realization of the strength 
of the league which the Bonapartes had formed 
against her. She became apprehensive, but with 
her usual tact and grace she managed the situation 
in such manner as to combat all their combined 
efforts. Her pleasure became a triumph when the 
Emperor sent for her one day, consulted her about 
the ceremony, and discussed the details of her 
coronation robe. She knew they had not yet made 
any impression upon him. 

The day of the coronation came at last. In her 
Memoires Madame Junot says of the event : " Who 
that saw Notre Dame on that memorable day can 
ever forget it ! I have witnessed in that venerable pile 
the celebration of sumptuous and solemn festivals, 
but never anything even approximating the splen- 



Josephine 193 

dor of the coronation of Napoleon. The vaulted 
roofs reechoed the chanting of the priests. The 
waving plumes which adorned the hats of the sena- 
tors and councillors, the splendid uniforms of the 
military, the clergy in all their ecclesiastical pomp, 
the multitude of beautiful women arrayed with that 
grace and elegance which is seen only in Paris — 
perhaps the picture has been equalled, but surely 
never excelled ! " 

When Napoleon arrived at the Cathedral he 
ascended the throne which had been erected for 
him in front of the altar. Josephine took her 
place by his side. The ceremony was long and 
seemed to weary him. Finally, however, Pope 
Pius Seventh, who by a masterpiece of diplomacy 
on Napoleon's part had been induced to cross the 
Alps to perform the ceremony, took the crown 
from the altar, and when he was about to place it 
on Napoleon's head the latter seized it and placed 
it there himself. "At that moment," said Madame 
Junot, " he was really handsome. His countenance 
was illumined with an expression which no words 
can describe." 

When the time came for Josephine to take part 
in this great drama she descended from the throne 
and advanced toward the altar where the newly- 
crowned Emperor awaited her. She was the per- 
sonification of elegance and majesty as she walked 



194 Boyal Women 

with her peculiar grace toward him, her long train 
borne by the imperial princesses. There was a battle 
royal between Napoleon and his sisters over the 
carrying of Josephine's train, but at last they 
yielded to the inevitable and rose to the occasion. 
Napoleon's countenance reflected his satisfaction as 
he saw Josephine approaching him. She knelt at 
the altar and raised her eyes to his, and both 
seemed to experience one of those fleeting moments 
of pure happiness which are unique in a lifetime. 

The Emperor performed with grace all that the 
ceremony required, but his manner of crowning 
Josephine was remarkable.* He took the little 
crown in his hands, placed it first on his own head, 
and then transferred it to hers. He took great 
pains to arrange it to fit her head, lifting it off 
once or twice in almost playful manner, and putting 
it on again, as if to promise her she should wear it 
lightly 

One of the ladies-in-waiting at the court of 
Josephine says of her: "The Empress was not 
beautiful of feature. These were irregular, and her 
teeth were neither white nor straight. But she had 
that suppleness of limb which is characteristic of 

* The painting of the Coronation of Josephine by David Is 
most interesting. Between the Emperor and the altar the 
Holy Father, Pope Pius VII, is seated and near him Cardinal 
Fesch, Napoleon's uncle. Behind the Emperor are Napoleon's 
sisters and to the left his brothers. From the little balcony 
above, the Corsican mother looks down upon the splendor of the 
gcene. It took David more than two years to paint this picture, 







# M*^^c 



Josephine 195 

those born in southern chmes, a regal carriage, and 
a voice that was Hke a caress. Many a time have 
I seen the Emperor burst into her apartments, 
blazing with wrath because something had gone 
wrong in his Cabinet, which was stilled instantly 
when she spoke to him ! Many a time have I fur- 
tively watched his face as he looked at her walking 
through the grounds or the long corridors of the 
palace! He who so loved beauty in all things had 
naught to complain of in his wife. Those who 
have seen her walk can never forget her." 

The few years of Josephine's life as Empress 
passed quickly, and then the blow fell which she 
so long had feared and which she had made such 
efforts to avert. To Napoleon's credit be it said 
that he had steadfastly refused to listen to the 
suggestions of those who wished the Empress ill, 
till the death of the little son of Louis and Hor- 
tense, whom he had wished to make his heir. Then 
the question of the succession stared him sternly 
in the face, and the idea of the divorce took definite 
form in his mind for the first time. 

That the Emperor's thoughts were weighty 
when he considered this step, none can doubt. If 
the Napoleonic institutions were to endure, stability 
of government was vitally necessary. These insti- 
tutions had been in operation so short a time that 
he feared for them in case of his death. If he died 



196 Royal Women 

without issue, would not fresh revolutions break 
out? Would not the splendid organization he had 
created be destroyed? Might not his Empire 
topple and fall as Alexander's did? Many there 
are who look upon this divorce as an exposition of 
gigantic egotism. It was not so. Josephine herself 
had come to see the advisability of such a step, 
although she hoped continually that it might not 
become a necessity. 

One evening about two weeks before the public 
announcement the Emperor and Empress dined 
alone. Josephine felt that the blow was about to 
fall. She ate nothing, and tears she could not 
repress ran down her cheeks. The Emperor sat 
moodily tapping the side of his glass with a spoon. 
When dinner was over Josephine retired to her 
apartments, whither the Emperor shortly followed 
her. Here he made known to her, as gently as he 
might, his decision to divorce her. He took her 
hands in his own and said : " Josephine, you know 
very well all that you are and have always been 
to me. But I have reached a place where my 
dearest affections must give way to the interests of 
France." 

"Say no more," said the Empress, "say no 
more. I have long expected this, but the blow is 
none the less mortal for that." 




11^. 



Napoleon aiiiioimciiig' to Josephine liis decision 
to divorce her 



Josephine 197 

There is no doubt that Napoleon suffered at this 
separation. He was genuinely attached to Jose- 
phine. Above all else he felt that she was necessary 
to his happiness. How deplorable a thing it is that 
affairs of state can be so exacting as to break 
violently the bonds of an affection which has stood 
the test of time ! 

With a dignity and sweetness of which few 
women would have been capable, Josephine met 
her sorrow face to face. Not even on that memo- 
rable evening — the day before the official disso- 
lution — when she did the honors of her court for 
the last time, did she permit herself to give way. 
A great throng was present. Supper was served in 
the Gallery of Diana, on small tables. Josephine 
sat, as always, in the center of the gallery, and 
the men passed near her, waiting for that pecu- 
liarly graceful nod of recognition which she was 
in the habit of bestowing upon them. They could 
but be struck with the perfection of her attitude 
in the presence of all these people who did her 
homage for the last time. All knew that within 
the hour she was to descend from the throne and 
leave the palace, never to return. At last one man 
spoke his thoughts. " Only a woman," he ex- 
claimed, " could rise superior to such a situation 
as this!" It was true. The Emperor showed by 



198 Royal Women 

no means so bold a front. It was the understanding 
that Napoleon was to go to St. Cloud and the 
Empress to return to Malmaison. 

It was the walls of Josephine's little boudoir 
which witnessed the final chapter of the tragedy. 
Here the inevitable good-bys were said. Here the 
Empress begged her husband not to forget her. 
Here, at his request, she promised to follow his 
wishes in a few things. She was to deny herself 
nothing that she wished, to take care of her health, 
to pay no attention to any gossip she might hear 
concerning him, and never to doubt his love! 

When the Emperor had left her, she entered her 
carriage and was driven away to Malmaison. The 
winter winds wailed and the cold rain of a December 
night beat against the windows. Alone, she gave 
way to her grief. Her thoughts went back to the 
days when the Conqueror of Italy had written her 
such burning words of love. Now the memory of 
them is all that is left her. She is separated forever 
from the man whom she loves. She is disowned, 
driven from the scenes of her former splendor. 
She has drunk to the depths the chalice of the bitter- 
ness of divorce, which for so long she had prayed 
to be spared. At Malmaison, the enchanted spot 
where she had been happy as the wife of the First 
Consul, Josephine dragged out the few remaining 



Josephine 199 

years of her life, shortened, undoubtedly, by her 
sorroWo 

On the twelfth of March, 1810, Napoleon was 
married to Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor 
of Austria. The Germans are fond of saying that 
when he married her he wed the ill-luck of the 
Austrian house. Napoleon had no affection to 
bestow upon her. She had, naturally, a horror of 
the man who had caused her country so much woe. 
This feeling passed away, to a certain extent, as 
time went by; but Marie Louise had already love 
in her heart for another before this marriage was 
contemplated, and to that other she returned when 
the vicissitudes of fortune had flung her husband 
adrift on the sea of exile, where he was wrecked. 
Nevertheless, she sought to play the Empress with 
gayety and good-will. But the charm of the court 
of Josephine never returned. She had accomplish- 
ments. Marie Louise had none, and whenever she 
appeared in public, with or without the Emperor, 
she wore always the apathetic smile of the Haps- 
burgs. 

A year after the marriage the long-desired heir 
to the French throne was bom. It had been 
arranged that the birth of the child should be 
announced to the people by cannon shot — twenty- 
one guns if a princess, a hundred and one if a 



200 Royal Women 

prince. When the twenty-first shot died away Paris 
held its breath. Then the people broke forth in the 
wildest enthusiasm when the next shot proclaimed 
the birth of the King of Rome. 

Josephine was staying at Navarre. When she 
heard the sound of the cannon she called her people 
together and said: "We, too, must rejoice. I will 
give you a ball, and the whole city shall be glad 
with us." 

Those who surrounded him knew very well that 
the surest passport to their Emperor's favor was 
a visit to Malmaison to pay one's respect to Jose- 
phine. He never lost the protecting tenderness 
which he had always cherished toward her. Once 
after the divorce the Emperor learned that Jose- 
phine's financial affairs had become entangled and 
sent a trusted officer of his staff to her with instruc- 
tions to straighten things out. His orders were 
explicit that he was not to distress her in any way. 
When the officer returned, the Emperor asked him 
what she said and did. He replied, " She said 
nothing. Sire. She did nothing. She only wept 
all the time." Napoleon sprang to his feet and 
began pacing rapidly up and down the room, as 
was his habit when under emotion. Finally he 
burst forth furiously, " You have managed badly — 
very badly. Did I not expressly order you not to 
make her weep ? " 



Josephine 201 

Not long after this Napoleon contrived, without 
Marie Louise's knowledge, to carry the babe to 
Malmaison to Josephine, who had begged to see 
him. When they parted he said to her, " This 
child, in concert with our Eugene, shall constitute 
our happiness and that of France." 

How mistaken was he! Uneasiness and dis- 
content were already rife in France. There was 
religious disaffection also. Napoleon, who ten 
years before had braved so much to reestablish the 
Catholic Church in France, now showed contempt 
for the authority of the Pope, and in so doing 
wounded the deepest sentiments of his country. In 
the palace at Fontainebleau he kept Pius Seventh 
prisoner for more than two years. They quarreled 
continuously. It was a case where Greek met 
Greek. Neither would yield. In addition to this, 
there was the conscription — the tax of blood and 
muscle demanded of the country. Formerly the 
only son of the mother, the father whose children 
were motherless, the extremely youthful, and the 
advanced in years had been exempt from military 
service. Not so now. The army must be main- 
tained, and between 1804 and 1811 a million seven 
hundred thousand Frenchmen had fallen in battle. 
Nor was that all. It had become evident that war 
with Russia was an assured thing. Causes had 
been accumulating for many months. Napoleon 



202 Royal Women 

hoped to avert this catastrophe, but failed, and 
France, poor, already devastated, wounded and 
bleeding France, was doomed to make the Russian 
campaign.* 

It was utter disaster. Napoleon led the Grande 
Armee into the very heart of that immense country, 
where it was engulfed in the snow. The little 
Italian-bred Emperor who had dreamed of con- 
quering Russia was himself conquered by the Rus- 
sian winter. When the French reached Moscow 



♦ The Russians hold that two trivial circumstances contributed 
largely to Napoleon's determination to make war upon Russia. 
First, when Bonaparte was a young lieutenant in the French 
army ho had applied to the Russian General Zaborowski for a po- 
sition on the staff of the Czarina Catherine II. But as he 
wished to be admitted to the Russian army with the rank of 
General, the request was refused. General Zaborowski never for- 
gave himself for this refusal. When Napoleon went to Russia he 
was an old man living in Moscow, and shortly afterward he died 
lamenting to the last moment that he had thus contributed 
toward the misfortunes which had overtaken his country be- 
cause of the personal animosity of Napoleon toward himself. 

The second circumstance was still more trivial. After the 
divorce, Napoleon had asked the hand of one of the sisters of 
the Czar. The plan had been frustrated by the latter's mother, 
Catherine II, who was also the mother of the princess whom 
Napoleon wished to wed. One hesitates to ascribe to wounded 
vanity the bitter hatred which Napoleon seemed to entertain 
toward Russia, but calling to mind the character and tempera- 
ment of the man it is impossible not to consider it. And when, 
later, the Czarina bestowed her daughter's hand upon a petty 
German prince, the intent of the offense was apparent. If there 
was one thing on earth which Napoleon could not tolerate it was 
ridicule. Furious and chagrined beyond expression, he wed Marie 
Louise of Austria. He drove the Duke of Oldenberg out of Aus- 
tria and threatened all the Czar's German relatives with the 
same fate. Then he began to prepare for war. It is thought 
that at first he intended only to awe Alexander with the magni- 
tude of his preparation and to compel him to humiliate himself 
before all Europe. But for once he met his match. In the face 
of 'that same Europe, Alexander got ready to resist and Napoleon 
was left (as the French say) to "drink the uncorked wine." 



Josephine 203 

they found that the city had been abandoned. 
Soldiers, citizens, the royal family, all had fled 
en masse. It was an empty conquest. Napoleon 
and his staff made their headquarters in the Krem- 
lin. But the great fire broke out and they were 
compelled to flee for their lives. Things went from 
bad to worse. The French troops were everywhere 
defeated. If they fell not in battle, they became 
victims of the climate or of the Russian dysentery. 
At last the Emperor got the army into some 
semblance of military order and that memorable 
retreat was begun — down the great white road 
which led out from Moscow. Napoleon started in 
a carriage, but soon got out and walked. The 
staff" fell in behind him. The rank and file followed. 
The Emperor looked out over the landscape, where, 
in places, the snow lay piled eight feet deep. The 
air was filled with vultures. The legs and arms of 
dead soldiers stuck out of the drifts. Now and 
then a ghastly face looked up at him. The soldiers 
were rebellious and hungry. The terrors of the cold 
and starvation wrung cries from the Emperor him- 
self. Paris ! France ! ! How far away they seemed. 
Of the long, freezing march, the passage of the 
Beresina, where the bridge broke down and let a 
thousand men and horses down into the ice-cold 
water, the half has never been told. Finally they 
crossed the Nieman, and what v;as left of the army 



204 Royal Women 

crawled to the hospitals and asked for the rooms 
where people die ! Napoleon and his ragged officers 
pressed on to Paris, but the pride of the French 
army lay asleep under the Russian snows. 

It took courage to face France after the great 
disaster, but he made the best of it. The powers, 
however, had allied themselves to crush him, and 
the one thing more to be feared than war — the 
spirit of revolt and anarchy at home — became 
evident at Paris. Some of his oldest and most 
trusted generals deserted him, and this treachery 
took away the last hope of the imperial cause. Not 
until now did that iron will waver under the shock 
of defeat. His family, as well as himself, de- 
nounced by his enemies, ignorant of the fate of 
his wife and child, he gave up the fight. 

In the court of the palace at Fontainebleau the 
Emperor bade farewell to his grenadiers. Then 
he departed for Elba — the third of the four 
islands — whither he was exiled. His discourage- 
ment was brief. He was told that he was to be 
in control of the affairs of the little kingdom, so 
he prepared for the journey with energy and spirit. 

Marie Louise showed her indifference to her 
husband's welfare by refusing to join him at Elba. 
When Josephine heard of it her indignation knew 
no bounds. She wrote Napoleon expressing her 
undiminished loyalty to his interests and begging 



Josephine 205 

to be permitted to come to him. This letter 
touched Napoleon deeply, although he was obliged, 
of course, to deny her request. Before the letter 
reached Malmaison, however, its gentle mistress had 
passed away. A slight cold, contracted while walk- 
ing in the park, developed into an attack which 
proved fatal. 

Napoleon made his headquarters at San Martino. 
Here his mother, the Princess Pauline, and twenty- 
six members of the National Guard joined him. 
But his desire to see again his little son was never 
gratified. 

The most dramatic episode in all Napoleon's 
career — a career unparalleled in history — was 
his escape fl'om the island of Elba. With a force 
of eleven hundred men he ran the gauntlet of 
foreign ships which guarded the harbor, and on 
the first of March landed at Cannes, on the way to 
Paris. The people hailed him joyfully. They 
followed him en masse. The journey was one 
triumphal march from the time of the landing till 
they reached the palace at Fontainebleau, on which 
day Louis Eighteenth fled from Paris. 

Napoleon was wont to say that the happiest 
period of his life was that march from Cannes to 
Paris. But the joy was short-lived. The enthu- 
siasm died away. Opposition developed, plots fol- 
lowed, and in the face of this revulsion the inevitably 



206 Royal Women 

happened. The man himself underwent a change. 
He became sad and preoccupied. His courage left 
him. He seemed to have lost faith in himself. 
Much of this was due to the fact that Austria 
refused to restore to him his wife and child. Marie 
Louise had succumbed to foreign influence. She 
had promised never more to see him. 

Three months after Napoleon returned to 
France, however, he had an army of two hundred 
thousand men, and on the night of the fourteenth 
day of June, 1815, he stood by his camp fire and 
watched his sleeping army on the field of Waterloo. 
In the morning the never-to-be-forgotten struggle 
was begun. By nightfall the defeat was complete. 
The Emperor realized it. He threw himself into 
the battle, seeking death as eagerly as he had sought 
victory at Marengo. Men fell all around him, 
before, behind, on all sides, but death seemed to 
have forgotten him. He returned to Paris where 
many urged him to continue the struggle. But 
loyalty to the best interests of France moved him 
to abdicate. He signed the abdication, renouncing 
his rights to the throne and proclaiming his son 
Emperor, with the title of Napoleon Second. 

Where should he seek refuge now, this fallen 
Emperor of the French.? His thoughts turned 
naturally to the spot where his happiest days, the 
days with Josephine, had been spent — Malmaison. 



Josephine 207 

Thither he betook himself on leaving Paris. What 
must have been his thoughts when he saw those 
gray walls in the distance? In the park, under the 
trees which whispered to him of dreams long dead, 
Josephine's unhappy daughter joined him. To- 
gether they entered the house, the deserted halls 
of which were tenanted by phantoms of the past. 
The walls of Josephine's home spoke to him in that 
mysterious language which one hears only in the 
silence. 

When he reached the Empress' apartments he 
paused, unable to enter, so profound was his emo- 
tion. Finally he went in alone and sat down. Here, 
in the gathering twilight, he gave rein to his 
thoughts. He heard in fancy the sound of Jose- 
phine's gentle voice. To him it seemed that the 
end of all things had come. Waterloo was lost. 
Josephine was dead. His Austrian wife had aban- 
doned him. His idolized little son was his no more 
except in dreams. 

On the morrow, his mother, his brothers and a 
few of his faithful soldiers assembled to bid him an 
eternal farewell. The last one of whom he took 
leave was his mother. When all the other good-bys 
had been said he turned to her, and their parting 
takes one back to the days of the Spartans, so 
sublime was its simplicity. ^'AdieUy mon fils,^* said 
Madame Laetitia. The Emperor kissed her hands. 



208 Boyal Women 

*^AdieUy ma mere," he answered. Then he entered 
his carriage, in Austrian uniform (which he had 
been compelled to don for the purpose of disguise), 
and was driven away. He had looked his last on 
Malmaison.* 

All plans to escape from France proved futile, 
and the Emperor resolved to give himself up to 
England. He sent the following message, charac- 
teristic and dignified, to the Regent : 

"Royal Highness: Exposed to the factions 
which divide my country, and to the hostilities of 
the great powers of Europe, I have closed my 
political career. I am come, like Themistocles, to 
seek the hospitality of the British nation. I place 
myself under the protection of its laws, which 
protection I claim from Your Royal Highness as 
the most powerful, the most constant, and the most 
generous of my enemies." 

Who shall ever be able to understand England's 
course as it regards Napoleon? There was every 
reason to suppose that she would receive him with 
dignity and consideration. Was he not an enemy 
worthy of English metal? He had been defeated 

* No historic spot in all the world is sadder than Malmaison. 
Here one lowers his voice and steps softly lest he disturb the 
sleep of illustrious hosts. Surely no man who has a love of 
either history or romance in his soul can enter this house with- 
out emotion. How sorrowful to contemplate that Malmaison 
was turned into barracks for Blucher's soldiers, and that half a 
century later tbe troops of the victor of Sedan installed them- 
selves in triumph in the halls where the First Consul held his 
military court I 



Josephine 209 

only after years of struggle. To leave him at 
large, was, of course, out of the question; but 
England's self-respect demanded that she treat him 
as became his genius and his rank. She might 
have made him a royal prisoner, letting him under- 
stand that she kept him so because she feared 
his power. But that so powerful a nation as 
England should forget the principles of justice 
and humanity in so far that she did not recognize 
what was due a fallen foe who had surrendered 
himself, is as incapable of solution as was the riddle 
of the Sphinx. 

A week later Napoleon found himself on board 
the Northumberland, outward bound for the stony 
island in the tropics. A few days later he was 
transferred to the Bellerophon, and on the fifteenth 
day of October, 1815, just four months after the 
battle of Waterloo, the vessel with the Emperor on 
board anchored in the harbor of Jamestown, St. 
Helena. Here the sealed instructions concerning 
him were delivered to the Governor-General, and a 
week later, the Emperor, under guard, watched the 
Bellerophon sink behind the sea on its return voyage 
to England. Here, in the last of the four islands, 
far from his country and his friends, unused to 
the climate, tortured and insulted by spying offi- 
cials, hearing nothing but miserable bickerings over 
the cost of his table (as though the bread of exile 



210 Royal Women 

were not sufficiently bitter), obliged to purchase at 
exorbitant price so small a luxury as a bunch of 
grapes, the Emperor lived and suffered for six 
long years. His days were one long succession of 
sorrows. Hope had vanished. His cause was lost. 
His friends had been proscribed. The members of 
his family, to whom he was so strongly attached, 
were the waifs and strays of the tempest which had 
wrought his own destruction. 

In his little cottage, called Longwood, Napoleon 
dictated his Memoires, When one considers that he 
was dependent solely on memory, and then remem- 
bers that these writings fill four large volumes, he 
realizes of what that active mind was capable. He 
lived as much as possible within his cottage. By 
degrees he gave up all exercise, and the steady 
advance of an incurable disease increased the pain 
and irritation of a nature which had been wounded 
to the quick. 

In the Corcoran Gallery at Washington is a 
marble figure of the Emperor by Vela. He calls 
it " The Last Day." There is no more superb 
statue in all the world. How changed now is the 
fine head and once handsome countenance! The 
sensitive mouth in which a young girl might have 
gloried has become a hard, firm line with a pathetic 
droop at the corners. The open robe shows a thin 
and bony chest. On his knee lies the outspread map 



Josephine 211 

of Europe. Alas, the hand that once carved out 
empires there is powerless now to trace his name! 
There is weariness and hopelessness and despair in 
the attitude of the dying Emperor whom England 
has condemned to this existence — chained, like 
Prometheus, to a barren rock. England may have 
feared or hated him, but her revenge had in it the 
quintessence of cruelty. 

On the night of the fifth of May, 1821, the most 
terrible tempest which had ever been known in the 
tropics poured its wrath upon St. Helena, as if to 
sweep her from the face of the waters. But within 
the little cottage, surrounded by his faithful few, 
the Emperor lay with quiet hands and the cross on 
his breast, unmindful of the fury of the storm. 

The graves of the Bonapartes lie far apart. 
That family so closely allied in life is wddely scat- 
tered in death. The little Corsican mother, who 
was the only member of the family from whom the 
Emperor did not expect and exact obedience, lived 
for fifteen years after her illustrious son had passed 
away. When the news of his death was brought to 
her she said with that simplicity which was a part 
of her, " I thank you, my friend. All is well now 
with my son." What does it matter to a man's 
mother that he has reached the pinnacle of earthly 
greatness ? He can never be aught to her but the 
babe that once lay in her arms! Madame Bona- 



212 Boyal Women 

parte died in 1836, and is buried at Rome. Eliza 
found a resting-place at Trieste, Pauline at Flor- 
ence, Caroline at Naples. 

In the village of Reuil is to be seen a modest 
little church. Bourienne tells us that during the 
time that the Bonapartes lived at Malmaison noth- 
ing so pleased Napoleon as the sound of these 
church bells. Ofttimes when they walked together 
(the Emperor often dictating letters as they went), 
he would stop still, asking Bourienne to do like- 
wise, in order that he might not lose one single 
tone of those distant bells whose music charmed 
and soothed him. Inside the little church is a 
monument. It calls forth a host of memories. The 
figure is that of a woman kneeling. She wears no 
royal insignia, but there is something about it all 
which is strangely familiar. Instinctively the mind 
goes back to a da}'^ long gone. One sees again the 
splendid interior of Notre Dame, the glittering 
pageant, the Emperor holding a crown above the 
head of his wife. Then one's eyes fall upon the 
simple inscription : 

A Josephine, 
Eugene et Hortense 

In the foundation of the pedestal she sleeps who 
was once Empress of the French, and many are the 
thoughts on the nothingness of human greatness 
which come to one in this village church with its 




c/: 



c3 
O 
O 







_._.J*^ 




H 


ft 


^ 


i [ 



O 



Josephine 213 

eloquent silence. Near by is another monument, 
which in later years Napoleon Third placed there 
to the memory of his idolized mother, Josephine's 
only daughter, Queen Hortense of Holland. 

They buried the Emperor in a valley, now called 
the Valley of Napoleon, beside a spring that he 
loved. Perhaps no grave in history is so well known 
as the willow-fringed mound in St. Helena where 
the Emperor slept in quiet for nineteen years. 
Then France awoke. She requested the return of 
Napoleon's body to his countrymen. England 
granted the request. The youngest son of Louis 
Eighteenth was despatched to St. Helena on this 
mission. The French officers and sailors who accom- 
panied him felt themselves deeply moved when the 
coffin of the Emperor was seen coming slowly down 
the mountainside, escorted by the British infantry, 
with arms reversed, the drums rolling an accompani- 
ment — the band playing the Funeral March. The 
English soldiers stood motionless on the beach. The 
French guns fired the royal salute. The coffin was 
placed on board the French cutter, and the scene of 
mourning became one of rejoicing. Flags were 
unfurled. The drums beat. Every vessel in the 
harbor fired a salute. The Emperor had come back 
to his own ! 

The vessel sailed away to France. After the 
landing, the passing of the funeral car was every- 



214 Royal Women 

where greeted with profound emotion and reverence. 
Through the streets of Paris the Beautiful — Paris, 
the city of his dreams — down the Champs Elysees, 
under the Arc de Triomphe, the splendid funeral 
cortege took its way. Vast crowds of people lined 
the streets in silence. There was no need for words. 
Yonder in the distance the Vendome Column towers 
over Paris, and its bronze tablets are still telling 
the nations the unforgotten story. 

The climax of all was the funeral mass in the 
Hotel des Invalides. The Archbishop of Paris, 
followed by long rows of v/hite-clad priests, formed 
the procession at the entrance. The king descended 
from his throne and advanced to meet them. When 
the casket had been placed upon the catafalque, the 
young prince reported the end of his mission. 
" Sire," he said, " I present to you the body of 
Napoleon, which, in accordance with your Majesty's 
commands, I have brought back to France." 

" I receive it — in the name of France," the king 
replied. Then turning to old Marshal Bertrand, 
whose loyalty to his master had extended to the 
sharing of his exile, the king said: 

"General, I commission you to place the Em- 
peror's glorious sword upon his bier." The great 
company looked on In the deepest silence, broken 
only by the half-stifled sobs of the few gray-haired 




The Emperor 



Josephine 215 

soldiers who remained of all those who had marched 
with the Emperor from Toulon to Waterloo. 

Napoleon's life was one of lights and shadows. 
None look upon him as a god. He was too full of 
faults. But so natural a man was he that wherever 
nature lived in a heart his sway was absolute, and 
this explains his hold on men. There are those who 
idolize him — those who execrate his memory. 
There are those who laugh to scorn the idea that 
affection was a part of Napoleon's make-up. But 
to deny that his love for his mother was sincere, to 
declare that he was not deeply attached to his 
brothers and sisters, or to hold that he did not make 
innumerable sacrifices for them — above all, to deny 
his passionate attachment to Josephine — would be 
to render a verdict not based upon the evidence. 
Moreover, the permanency of Napoleon's greatness 
is a marvelous thing. Year after year, accusers 
arise, assail his memory, pass away, and are for- 
gotten. But like some gigantic cliff against which 
the restless sea beats ceaselessly, the figure of Napo- 
leon, grim and impenetrable, stands out against the 
stormy skies of history. 

The most impressive monument in all Europe is 
the Emperor's tomb. It was his dearest wish that 
he might sleep on the banks of the Seine, in the 
midst of the French people. That wish at last came 



216 Royal Women 

true. The solemn silence which fills the crypt is 
more eloquent than words. One looks down upon 
that massive sarcophagus. One sees the tattered 
flags. One reads in the floor words which are 
burned into the world's history — Wagram — 
Moscow — Friedland — Rivoli. One remembers 
also how restless was the heart of him who slumbers 
here so soundly. Not even the bugles and the guns 
of victorious Prussians thundering at the gates of 
Paris could rouse him from his dreamless sleep. 
One lifts his eyes to the splendid dome of the 
Hotel des Invalides, beneath which, guarded in 
death as in life by Bertrand and Duroc, his favorite 
Marshals, and close by the bodies of his brothers, 
Jerome and Joseph, the Emperor awaits the last 
great call to arms. And then — involuntarily one's 
thoughts revert to the quiet little church at Reuil 
where Josephine is sleeping her last long sleep. 



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